Posted by Unknown on 23rd Apr 2010

Reviewed by Back to Bagdad
Review by Tobias Tanner follows
This new novel from Miss Lizbeth raises the bar to a new standard. She always keeps me guessing about which paths her story will take. The novel is fresh and extremely well-written, and will satisfy a red-penned grammarian like me who appreciates watching a painfully attractive woman grovel and learn to submit like the basest slave.

The main character, Marlena has lost her husband and seems to drift in a normal existence. But her dreams and strangely, her gardening drive her to seek ways to satisfy her fundamental submissive longings. She quickly moves from confused novice to convinced and humiliated-but-willing naked slave who gets used however her new master desires. Her slave contract is only for the summer, so she will eventually return to her normal life, but Miss Lizbeth’s stories never end as you expect. Reading about Marlena’s yearnings makes me want to leap into the story and wholly satisfy her sexual cravings. Oh, to own such a woman! I feel like a Pavlovian dog when I read a Dusseau novel such as this and I become fully aroused just anticipating each story line.Every story builds and climaxes so well, I crave a warm, female body after it is finished. This novel cracks my top ten list of favorite erotic stories.


Reviewed by Tobias Tanner

Dusseau’s main character in this novel (Marlena) is a submissive and, as she describes it, a bit of a masochist. She is also a grown woman with experience and an agenda who has already acted on that knowledge in her life. Her fantasies tend toward dominant men, although she has tried the other flavor in FemDom scenarios. As the book opens, this woman has made up her mind to follow the dream. She tells her old college friend (a dominatrix), “I need a man.” Men, as it happens, are readily available to fulfill Marlena’s wishes—and then some.

The story itself is simple; dominants advertise for temporary slaves and those with the courage select their own poison. Marlena signs up for an Englishman. She is a teacher and has the summer free. Her children are grown (more or less), her husband has died, and Marlena herself is living with what she considers a huge hole in her life, an emptiness that aches to be filled.

The garden in the title is a metaphor. Marlena has a garden left untended of late at home and her new master has a garden that she is forced to slave in. Tilling fertile soil, planting the seeds and nurturing what grows runs in direct parallel to the relatively barren soil of Marlena’s own soul, and that of her master. What she comes to realize is that being the garden is hard work, as it is a violent, penetrative act. However, the pain involved has great rewards and, as her lover learns, great consequences. With growth comes responsibility.

I liked this character very much. In fact, I liked all these characters. Each has a place. They are tough and resourceful. Marlena and her Master are intelligent and thoughtful, able to sense the growth and, in the end, to reap what they have sown. There is harshness here, punishment and humiliation, harnesses and whippings and sex. And there is tenderness, and great beauty.

After all, a garden needs constant attention, and a vigilant gardener. They must be lovers, after a fashion, and if the conditions are just right, they will produce something between them that is greater and more beautiful than one could do without the other. The sum will be greater than its parts. Once again, Lizbeth Dusseau shows us how.