Reviews: Lovers XXX (3)

Allie Rowbottom’s Lovers XXX follows Jude and Winnie, two young women who become caught up in the San Fernando Valley porn industry during its 1980s boom years. What begins as a story of friendship, ambition and escape gradually becomes something darker as drugs, fame, exploitation and loss take their toll. The novel later shifts forward in time as Winnie tries to make sense of what happened and the legacy those years have left behind.

It was interesting reading this directly after New Skin. Rowbottom has said that “Porn, similar to plastic surgery, is something that a lot of people have a personal relationship to but don’t talk about,” and there is a clear thread connecting the two books. Lovers XXX establishes many of the themes that continue through her fiction: women at odds with their bodies, mothers and daughters struggling toward one another, and beauty as both aspiration and burden.

The characters are well drawn and the friendship at the centre of the novel is its strongest feature. Rowbottom writes convincingly about people searching for connection and validation, even when they are making choices that seem destined to end badly. There is no shortage of ambition here, and she captures a particular time and place with confidence.

Ultimately, though, this book wasn’t for me. There was simply too much sex, too many drugs and too many bad decisions for my taste. I could appreciate what Rowbottom was trying to do without particularly enjoying the experience of reading it. The LA Times said “Finally, the definitive literary Valley porn novel arrives.” I would say, “I wasn’t aware there was a vacancy to fill.”

I loved this book. An addictive and engaging story about best friends Jude and Winnie, two young girls running away from difficult childhood homes with aspirations to become famous writers, like Didion and Babitz, but finding themselves entering the dark and dangerous world of the adult entertainment industry in 1980s Los Angeles. But several years in, a fight between the two girls leads to Winnie leaving and the friends losing contact. Thirty years later, Winnie is desperate to know what became of Jude, and starts searching for her. The story is so riveting and you instantly become invested in and protective of Jude and Winnie, wanting only the best for them and longing for happy endings for them both. This book explores themes of girlhood, female friendship, sexual desire, and the inherent dangers of being a young woman in a man's world, and all the threats and objectification that entails. Lovers XXX also comes with multiple shocking and unexpected twists that I did not see coming and kept me engaged and emotionally involved in the story throughout. A great read!

Allie Rowbottom's Lovers XXX is well written, raw, emotional and human tale of two young friends, Jude and Winnie, caught up in the early '80s porn scene. It dives straight in with the grit of sex, hard drugs, criminality and questionable age-gap 'romance' within the first few pages and hurtles along at a breath-taking pace into the porn industry for the first half of the book. The second half is slower and more reflective, leading to a bittersweet ending.

Although graphic at times, this book doesn't sensationalise the sex industry. More importantly, it doesn't moralise either. Rowbottom also has a side swipe at feminists intellectualising porn for their own gains.

Jude and Winnie relationship feels very true in that friendship (or love) is truly never black and white; there's always a little one-sidedness and power balances. The other characters here also feel very true; there's no caricatures, just deeply flawed human beings in a patriarchal system.