Review: 'Turning on the Girls' a funny, sexy spin

"Turning on the Girls"
By Cheryl Benard
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Fiction
256 pages

By L.D. Meagher
Special to CNN

(CNN) -- Okay, let's assume women have just taken over the world. Don't worry about how. That's not important. And let's assume they have set about revising the roles of gender in society, and are re-educating the population to comport with the new reality.

One of the societal functions that needs immediate revision is the notion of romance. Specifically, the romantic fantasy. In a world run by enlightened and empowered women, what constitutes a healthy and socially constructive erotic daydream?

That's the question Cheryl Benard puts before her protagonist in "Turning on the Girls." Lisa, a research assistant at the Ministry of Thought, is given the task of combing through pre-Revolutionary literature to find romantic images compatible with the New Order. Her search is abetted, and complicated, by Justin, the attractive young man nearing the end of his re-education who has been assigned to help her.

All of which sounds like the premise for an earnest and somber treatise on human sexuality. "Turning on the Girls" is anything but. It's a wonderfully entertaining and tremendously funny examination of women and men and what makes them tick, individually and collectively. Benard's inventiveness is matched by her eye for detail and the razor edge of her wit.

Toying with the reader

Lisa, quite naturally, works in an office dominated by women, which gives rise to a particularly feminine brand of office politics. One skilled practitioner, Eva, encases her manipulations in a syrupy sweet exterior that Lisa finds galling.

"And Eva isn't even her real name," Benard explains. "The world is suddenly full of Evas -- you can change your name if you want to, and Eva is a popular choice. Most of the new Evas had names like Henrietta or Alexandra or Roberta or Charlene before, names that show you were supposed to be a boy, but in this particular Eva's case, Lisa has reason to believe her name used to be Tiffany."

Lisa may be the central character of the story. But the most interesting character is the author herself, or at least the persona of The Author that Benard injects into the narrative. She is one part narrator, one part Greek chorus and two parts jaded observer. Her purpose is akin to that of the stage manager in the play "Our Town," but this stage manager isn't always sympathetic to the plight of the characters, and isn't above toying with the reader.

Take, for instance, the moment when Lisa realizes that she is -- at least temporarily -- at the mercy of a backwoods recluse who has never had the benefit of male re-education. She doesn't know if he's going to help her or hurt her, but she's leaning toward the latter.

Their eyes lock.

Ha, got you! Of course their eyes don't lock. What do you think I'm writing here, a romance novel? No, their eyes don't lock.

Well, maybe they snag a little, like the sleeve of your mohair sweater brushing against the Velcro tab of your running shoe when you bend over to tighten it, leaving a wisp of yellow wool behind as it pulls free.

The book is filled with such pithy asides. As she examines the traditional roles of men and women, Benard notes that the advance of civilization gave men an ever-more-sedate role as they evolved from hunter-gathers to paper-pushers, while relegating women to domestic chores, such as cooking and cleaning. It never occurred to women, she asserts, that they were surrounded by all sorts of lethal implements, from kitchen knives to caustic cleansers, with which they could have effected their liberation.

"That happens more often than you might think," she observes. "Take the Chinese, enjoying their ornamental fireworks and never realizing they had invented gunpowder, until the white dudes arrived and started blowing them up with it. That's how it is with women. Put four men in a kitchen, and they could have a war, bombs and all. Put a thousand women in a kitchen, and all you'll get is a bake sale ... but that's a different subject."

Double meanings

Even the title of the book has a sly double meaning. Lisa is looking for appropriate female fantasies, socially acceptable ways of "turning on the girls." At the same time, dissident men are organizing -- planning an insurrection aimed at overthrowing feminine dominance. They are, in a very different sense, "turning on the girls."

Cheryl Benard has an uncanny ability to make her reader think and laugh at the same time. She tackles one of the weightiest themes there is -- the age-old conflict between women and men -- with great imagination and pitch-perfect wit. She doesn't avoid stereotypes. Indeed, she litters the landscape with them -- a feminist government promoting holistic healing and New Age religion, a counterrevolutionary meeting of men devoted to watching a pirated tape of "Baywatch." Yet with each stereotype, she explores a deeper issue of how men and women differ.

For a novel that begins with an examination of female fantasies, there's surprisingly little sex in "Turning on the Girls." Lisa is genuinely horrified by the sexual images she studies in books ranging from the Marquis de Sade to Harlequin-style bodice rippers. She concludes that she is without passion. She is wrong, of course, and eventually her passions are aroused by an unlikely candidate.

Hmmm, maybe this is a romance novel after all.

But it's a lot more than that. "Turning on the Girls" is funny and thoughtful, smart and smart-alecky (or, more appropriately, "smart-Alexa-y"). It's fast-paced and eminently readable, with engaging characters and an ingenious plot. And it offers important insights into the make-up of women and men that give the reader a lot to ponder after the last chuckle fades and the last page is turned.