Product Description

A memoir in three parts, Concertina spans five years of the author's life as she makes the extraordinary transition from culinary expert to professional dominatrix. Taking the reader into the secret, hidden world of suburban sado-masochism, Winemaker introduces us to a fascinating array of colourful characters, before she breaks the code of domination: falling in love with a client. The chemistry between the author and her lover - a high-powered City executive addicted to wild sex games - becomes the catalyst for a deeper and more intimate exploration of their desires. As they take the games out of the dungeon and into their everyday lives, the consequences of their union make addictive reading, and we learn something about relationships taken to a level most of us never dare experience.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #163410 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Susan Winemaker is a London-based Canadian writer who majored in philosophy and trained as a professional chef. This is her first book.

Customer Reviews

Of love and pain
Concertina is not a celebration of BDSM. It is instead, unexpectedly, a love story -- a beautiful, erotic, haunting, aching account of passion and of desolation, which reaches a seemingly inevitable (and welcome) conclusion.

As advertised, the book is also an insider's account of the world of domination. Winemaker describes in detail sessions in which men paid her to subject them to suffucation, bondage, torture, feminization, and many other abuses. She enables the reader to emphathize both with her and with the men who feel compelled to seek out such treatment.

But Winemaker is not a true believer. She entered the world of domination as an open-minded apprentice, and grew into a conscientious and skilled professional. For a time her professional life merged with her private life. Still, she never seemed to hunger for, or need, or particularly relish the power exchange which is the heart of domination.

It is when Adam walks into Winemaker's life that the book truly begins: "On the questionnaire under physical description it said: tall, slender, fit, handsome, mid-thirties, dark hair, green eyes. But let's be accurate here: his eyes are sometimes glacial blue, sometimes aquamarine, and sometimes like the white foam off a breaking wave. They were the most aquatic, tempestuous, supernatural eyes I'd ever seen. I was instantly shaken, instantly in trouble."

The full explication of that trouble is an adventure which is both arresting and entrancing. Susan Winemaker has given us all a gift in providing a window upon her heart.

a succulent read
Concertina is a lovely book ; cool, clear eyed, serene, delicious. It deals with food, fetishes, London, love, how to relish all your senses and how to make the total gift of your self to another person.

We follow the professional, romantic, cultural, culinary and sexual adventures of an intelligent and searching woman without ever being told what to think. The writing is sometimes so beautiful you want to read the words aloud and savour them like fruit ; whether she's describing the Scottish Highlands or the dungeons of suburbia, pomegranate seeds with feta cheese or the pain of waiting for your perfect lover to say something resonant.

I know from experience that people with sexual fetishes are neither strange nor perverted, they are as varied in character and type as anyone else and can be warm, witty and tender people who just happen to have a particular sexuality. It's refreshing to see this acknowledged in a book that doesn't judge, but conveys the simplicity and compassion needed for true sexual fulfilment in whatever form it takes.

The relationship between Susan and Adam particularly fascinated me ; it contains such intense psychological exploration and generosity of spirit, and the lovers have such an awe-inspiring ability to submit to each other, I envied them.

The author comes across as vulnerable, powerful, alive, blessed with a subtler palate than most of us and an intransigent need for the extremes of truth. Domination is about kindness too, a gift given and received like home-made food [`a psychosexual feast' as she says], and this book makes that clear.

Like a good film, this book mostly shows rather than tells, with powerful images and sensations but no need for added syrup.
I would recommend it to anyone.

A bit dark and gloomy!
As a professional dominatrix myself I live in hope of somebody writing a full and fair account of the occupation when the sensationalist word 'Dominatrix' is used in the title. No luck so far!

Where was the fun and the laughs.. the joy..the epiphanies...the deep personal connection and the passion it evokes? Where was the intelligence, closeness and trust! The cameraderie! Was it all intentionally avoided for some purpose pertaining to the plot or was it all aspects of the profession that the author couldn't appreciate for some reason... hard to say.

This element of the book (without which the book would make for a pretty torturous read) was laced with such an irritating bias towards the bleak and the superficial that I found it increasingly more difficult to read as I went on. It became positively depressing!

If one must use the inclusion of such material to boost the sale prospects of a narrative then the least that could be done would be to give the subject a more balanced.... less subjective airing. I found the book disturbingly cheerless.