Mars and Venus in the Bedroom: A Guide to Lasting Romance and Passion - Hardcover

Gray's What Your Mother Couldn't Tell You & Your Father Didn't Know (1994) failed to match the success of its predecessor, the megaselling Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (1992), so this time out, Gray titles his offering seemingly in hopes of stimulating brand-name recognition and, hence, consumer loyalty. Still, the antinomy of Mars and Venus, of masculine aggression and feminine absorption, of masculine flame and feminine smoldering, is apt when discussing the differences in men's and women's sexual response that underlie all Gray's advice on sustaining satisfying sexual relations. Also underlying his counsel, and making this guide different from many others as well as appealing to the new moral conservatism of the 1990s, are his endorsement of monogamy and his repeated assertion that "great sex is God's gift." In accordance with those emphases, Gray writes not so much of the "mechanics of sex" as of the "mechanics of making sure you have sex," and his chapters bear titles such as "The Joy of Quickies" and "How to Rekindle the Passion" as well as the more expected "How to Drive a Woman Wild with Pleasure." Gray's a plain, even pedestrian, writer, capable of talking about sex in a manner neither lubricious nor clinical, and that capability, along with the title, helps ensure that the half-million-copy first printing HarperCollins has ordered will, as they say, move. Ray Olson