Product Description

Tim and Rob are 20-something men who both fall madly in lust with an American woman who has to come to work in their office, the fabulously sexy Clare Jordan. In a drunken moment they devise an audacious race, the 'Clare Jordan Five and Three Quarter Feet Handicap Stakes'. The victor wins the right to invite her out on a date. Tim's challenge is to sleep with five different women whose name begins with the initials C, L, A, R and E. Rob has to sleep with one or more women in five different places beginning with the same initials e.g. cinema, lay-by, arboretum. As Rob outlines the rules of the race to the reader he agrees one thing: he will tell the reader everything but he won't describe the sex. The result is an often outrageous, occasionally perceptive and always hilarious novel which culminates in Rob completing the race but finding true love in the most romantic and unexpected way. Overwhelmed by the experience he breaks his own rule and describes the sex which is, of course, fantastic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #398964 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
'very entertaining.' IRISH TATLER

Start Bridget Jones-style Chick Lit, take three steps back and stumble one forward, and welcome to Twit Lit! Falling neatly into the laddish gap left behind by the cancellation of TV's Men Behaving Badly but given a bit more polish to reflect the new millennium, Mark Mason's story is about two office mates who embark on a caddish bet revolving around a race to the beds of a series of women in specific order. The prize is first crack at the sexy new American exec on the loser's tab. Annoyingly, Mason burdens the diarist-narrator with the weight of PC preliminary apologies (we were drunk, broken-hearted, foolish, guilty, socially conditioned, etc.), taking the legs from under what could have been a fantastic romp through the rightly embarrassing haze that is the masculine perspective on sex. Instead we have a very lightweight and unthreatening romantic comedy which is at least polished, swift, garnished with a joke on almost every page and going for the zeitgeist with a shotgun. Generic typecasting guarantees that the book steers itself into the light at the end of the Tunnel of Emotional Maturity with a studious predictability. (Kirkus UK)

Synopsis
Tim and Rob are 20-something men who both fall madly in lust with an American woman who has to come to work in their office, the fabulously sexy Clare Jordan. In a drunken moment they devise an audacious race, the 'Clare Jordan Five and Three Quarter Feet Handicap Stakes'. The victor wins the right to invite her out on a date. Tim's challenge is to sleep with five different women whose name begins with the initials C, L, A, R and E. Rob has to sleep with one or more women in five different places beginning with the same initials e.g. cinema, lay-by, arboretum. As Rob outlines the rules of the race to the reader he agrees one thing: he will tell the reader everything but he won't describe the sex. The result is an often outrageous, occasionally perceptive and always hilarious novel which culminates in Rob completing the race but finding true love in the most romantic and unexpected way. Overwhelmed by the experience he breaks his own rule and describes the sex which is, of course, fantastic.

From the Author
Have you ever read a novel that honestly explains men and what they think about sex ?

I hadn't, which is why I wrote this. Yes, there's Tony Parsons, there's Nick Hornby, but they're writing about men in their thirties and forties, who've settled down and had children. Men in their twenties, those horrible creatures who want to sleep with lots of women, who say they're going to call and don't - I hadn't found a novel that dealt honestly with that side of the male psyche. 'What Men Think About Sex' tries to do that.

My girlfriend, my friends (both male and female) and my agent (coincidentally called Clare, as is the gorgeous woman at the heart of the novel) were a great help as I wrote it. Talking to them allowed me to check that I was answering the questions women want to ask, and representing men honestly, but doing it in a humorous and entertaining way. It seemed to work; when Time Warner bought the book, they told me that people of "every sex, every age and every persuasion" there had read it and liked Rob (the story's narrator). He's meant to be a sympathetic character, who can be honest about men's sexual attitudes without being offensive.

The book is the story of Rob and Tim's race, interspersed with sections where Rob addresses the reader directly on the subject of men and what they think about sex. Some of his messages are surprising ones (for instance that men don't talk frankly with each other about sex - it's women who do that). Several women have told me that they like the section where Rob outlines the subtle differences between 'pretty', 'good-looking', 'horny' and 'sexy'. Rob also grows up as the book progresses, and what he learns is a crucial part of the story.

Added to all this are parachute jumps, nightmare blind dates, the odd black eye, and extreme frustration as Rob tries to have sex in a lift.

Women identified with 'Bridget Jones's Diary', men learned from it. 'What Men Think About Sex' is an attempt to do the same thing the other way round. I really hope you enjoy it. Best wishes, Mark.

Customer Reviews

Don't let the title fool you
... This is a work of fiction. It's bloke-lit at its best: well-written, entertaining and skilfully plotted. Let's hope Mark Mason keeps writing.

as a woman a learnt a few tricks
maybe I'm just highly inexperienced but I found this book to be frank & open about issues regarding pleasuring men. I found out some stuff I didn't know about technique etc. My bloke seems to enjoy what I've learnt although he thinks the book's crap. I think it's how you read it.

Absolute rubbish
Absolute rubbish - so-called laddishness at its most wimpish. Painfully self-effacing. Had I been able to give it no stars then I would happily have done so. A better title would have been Andrex, cos that's where it's going.