Other people's praise

It is a delightful writing. If I hadn't seen the name of the author, I would have thought it was written by a woman, as the stress is clearly put on the description of feelings and emotions. A book which made me understand so many things. Which confirmed many others as well. Which put words on a lot of experienced "feelings". I think I had been waiting for this book for a long time. It seemed I had often been looking for it. But for the end, which troubled me a little, I would have found the Holy Grail.

Under Jean-François Mopin's skilful pen, Le Bandeau is a wonderful novel of initiation, a mix between The Lover and Dangerous Liaisons. The author maintains the mystery about the identity and motivations of the unknown man throughout the book, before uncovering them with brio in the last pages. But without obliterating this successful suspense, Le Bandeau draws its power from the admirable portrait of feminine desire thanks to Her. The student does not give herself blindly away to an epistolary docility and the comfort of a blindfold which takes away the guilt. On the contrary, she often decides to bend her common destiny with the unknown man in order to offer herself to him fully. Asserting itself as a lost preface to the Story of O, Le Bandeau turns out to be a remarkably sensual and suggestive text, which will betwich the female readers and, you can be certain of it, more than one will probably dream of living experiences as precious as this one. Maybe you will make this wish come true, Men ?

I read this erotic novel with great carefulness, relentlessly looking for what he had liked in this work. What could his thoughts, his desires, his emotions be... What words had transported him ?
What were the gestures that had captured him... Is it the rise to an unlimited liberty throughout the pages in the heart, soul and body of the heroine, artless and libertine alike ?
The blindfold over her eyes. Was he seduced, as I was, as gradually the Lover led her to discover herself, never leaving anything to chance ? Was he, as I was, fascinated by that Lover in absolute power, who only acts in love, ceaselessly pushing the young woman's limits further, far enough to allow her to abandon her brain and body ?
When did he undestand, He, who was the Lover ? I asked him. He kept silent. Shocked to discover this disturbing identity ? Did he give in to the evidence that Love, if it can come in a shape that is both sublime and disturbing, can also be used to objectify the Other , So he will discover his true self, grow up, move on, have self-confidence at last... But that you must never objectify the other for your own self-gratification...
I wanted to holler, when I closed the book. I would have liked him to be there, then, because I would have told him why the tears were forming on my cheek, Why suddenly I regretted having wanked several times as I read the book, carried away by words which described scenes that inhabited so many of my fantasies. I was chastised for these masturbations, feeling guilty that I had not been able to dominate my physical needs and find pleasure in the sole literary pressure, so well renderd by the author. Had I worn the blindfold, like her, everything would have been different... A very refined first novel...