Book Review: Bonk by Mary Roach
Ada Lenore
Mary Roach’s romp through the world of sex research is at turns agonizing and laugh-out-loud funny, and sometimes both. It may as well have been titled “honk.” I read it at stop lights and I repeatedly got caught, lost in one of its many tales, not noticing the green light. I also read while waiting to pick up my boyfriend from work. More than once he made me jump; I was deeply involved with Roach and her researchers and didn’t notice his approach.
When a chance to find out how sex research is actually conducted arises, Roach pounces on the opportunity. She is the first to volunteer, and she brings her husband along for the ride. They travel to London to have sex inside an MRI, the most un-romantic thing they have ever done, and that’s just the beginning. He sticks it out for the good of the research, and her research about the research.
At the beginning of the book, which follows her New York Times Bestseller “Stiff” (about cadavers), she tells us that she’s really not that into sex or death. Mary Roach’s obsession is research. If you have ever wondered how much sexual research has been done, or how it has been done, Mary Roach covers it all. I would love to see the expense reports for their various travels to hospitals and research labs.
In the course of her adventures, she has written a balanced survey of sex studies.
On topics from the not-distant-enough past of masturbation “cures” to current research using 3-D ultrasound to see exactly what happens during coitus, her writing is both chatty and compulsive. Just when I thought she was never going to stop taking about peni, penal implants and and ED (or as it used to be called, impotence), she moved on to research about the clitoris and the mysteries of female arousal.
I wish I could attend a cocktail party with Ms. Roach. After a couple drinks, she might get into the details of her quest to find the Masters and Johnson automatic penis. Stories from this book have the potential to make any party interesting–did you know that female lubrication is made of plasma?–or extremely uncomfortable. The chapter on artificial insemination for pigs and the porcine sexual response cycle would make even the wildest party-goer squirm
Bonk is well worth the time it takes to read. You will come away knowing a little more about the science of sex and maybe even something about how your own body works. Reading this book helped me realize how much orgasm is connected to not thinking. For those of us thinking about sex (or not thinking about sex), this is the book to read.
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I loved this book so much! Among the more entertaining parts (snicker) was when she talked about the various impotence cures that had been tried, including the implantation of monkey, goat, and I *believe* human cadaver testicles. I read much of that section out loud to my husband while bar-hopping in San Francisco.
I have made some noises both to Mary Roach and John Moe (host of Wits) that she should be a guest on the next season of the show – hopefully that happens, because she would be a FANTASTIC person to have there.
One minor thing with your review, though: Mary and her husband did not have intercourse inside the MRI, but rather were monitored by ultrasound. The idea of fucking inside an MRI tube scares the shit out of me, personally – I am amazed that anyone has been able to do that.