Brittany Newell’s second novel is hard to position – is it a noirish thriller, a sex-work satire, a romance? What it is not, and here the author is clear, is a memoir. Newell is a Stanford graduate and a professional dominatrix; her life has bled into Soft Core – but, as she recently told America’s NPR, into the novel’s “sensory details” rather than the facts. This murkiness is one of the defining textures of the book, giving it an uncanny, almost ghostly feel. For a story about desire and longing, it is surprisingly spooky, full of stalkers, creeps and doubles.
Ruth (or Baby or Sunday, as she sometimes calls herself) is a stripper and a newbie dominatrix working in San Francisco. She goes from her shift at the brothel to her shift at the club, weaving through a perpetually crepuscular world of private dances and all-night burger joints. She keeps herself so busy because her sweet ketamine dealer ex-boyfriend Dino has vanished into thin air and the affair she was having with her sugar daddy has fizzled out. In short, she is lonely, and so keeps herself busy facilitating the various fantasies of the Bay Area’s many unfulfilled men.
