Review: Spanking the Maid by Robert Coover

Spanking the Maid by Robert Coover

While reading this book I got the distinct feeling I kept losing my place and was reading the same paragraph over and over again. I'm not really sure what exactly was happening in this book. I know that sounds funny considering I just read the whole thing.

The story line is basically a guy (the master) waking up over and over again either by himself or by the maid. He goes about his morning routine which basically consists of his boner shrinking back into his pajamas, peeing really loud in the bathroom, and getting pissed his towels are damp when he gets out of the shower. The spanking the maid part comes in after she has started her cleaning for the day. He finds something wrong with at least one thing if not more that she does and spanks her. Sometimes with his hand, sometimes with a rod... sometimes a bull pizzel (which I had no idea what it was so when I looked it up Dictionary.com gave me: A whip made from a bull's penis.... gross) was even mentioned a few times. The book does switch over to the maid's point of view a few times which is where we find out that she's cleaning to please him and his continuously hopeful, even at the end of the book, that one day her cleaning will be perfect. The guy always wakes up half remembering a dream and by the end of the book it's almost as if the maid is actually the dream part and he's acting out in his dream because of his reaction to something he's done in real life ... but it never really comes out and says that, and he never remembers his dream when he wakes up.

As if this story line wasn't weird enough... the maid finds something in his bed every time she takes the sheets off to remake the bed, the grossest one ".. the maid comes in with a dead fetus and drops it down the toilet, flushes it." What the hell right? While I feel like book stole a little bit of my brain cells and it's definitely a half hour of my life I'm not getting back... it was an interesting read. If you don't take the book at face value and instead read into every line and comment made... you just mind find a story line that doesn't involve spanking or the maid.