WARNING:These books are by the Marquis de Sade. That means I'll be talking about all manner of disturbing and explicit things in the context of a review. If you're likely to be offended by such content for the Love of God, go away now. I don't want to get any more hate mail- I'm still paying neighbourhood kids to start my car after the infamous days of cosmetics reviews.

I once spent an entire weekend looking at internet pornography (I can quit whenever I want) so it was with a naive sense of no-trepidation that I picked up this weighty tome of the Marquis de Sade.

(And weighty it certainly is at some 753 pages)

It's published, coincidentally, by Grove Press of New York.

Justine is the most abominable book ever engendered by the most depraved imagination- Napoleon Bonaparte.

The book, that could also double as a house brick, containes the following Sade works:

A selection of letters by Sade
Sade's final Will and Testament
Dialogue between a Priest and a Dying Man
Philosophy in the Bedroom
Eugenie de Franval
Justine, or Good Conduct Well Chastised

The book is also padded out by substantial biographical information- however it is written in such an obtuse and academic style to be of little interest to anyone but Sade or literary scholars.

Of these, the most famous is Justine so it is with this that I will begin the review. I must warn the squeamish or inhibited among you to turn back now and I'm really not kidding. Some of the stuff I'll be making reference to shocked me, and I once agreed to wear a Groucho mask and faux-leather chaps in flagrante delicto without blinking.

The brave, foolhardy and stupid- press on!

Justine is a massive novel but incredibly crafted by the Marquis de Sade. It is essentially a 'moral' tale in which Sade shares his viewpoints that, to paraphrase, you may as well lead a decadent life as you will have no greater rewards than someone who leads a pure and chaste life. Told in first person by Justine, it is a distressing and stomach-churning story of how she desperately tries to keep her virtuous ways- despite the unspeakable horrors she is forced to face.

One of the more tame obstacles she faces is that she rescues a wealthy traveller from bandits- only to have the wealthy traveller turn on her, rape her multiple times vigourously (whilst whipping her with a thorny branch) and steal all her belongings.

The scary thing is, compared to what to come that is like the Sunday School Picnic of the local Baptist Church.

Selected highlights include the chap who plans to dissect his fourteen year old daughter, the respected gentleman who gets off on ejaculating over the stump of a young female neck from which the head has recently been removed- or some really disturbing blood letting scenes.

Importantly, most of the worst offenders are respected pillars of society- the bandits may rape her but the monks imprison her as a concubine who will be buried alive if she dares to fall pregnant. The brothel keeper may force her to prostitution- but the Judge wants to masturbate over her internal organs.

Where Sade's skill as author lies is not in the sheer offensiveness of his material but that each scene is worse than the one that precedes it- for around 400 pages. It's unbelievably done in that you really think it can't get any worse than what you just read- but does. Time and time again.

But he saves his biggest gut punch for the ending- which is one of the most shocking and breathtakingly surprising endings I've ever read.

I have to confess that I physically couldn't finish Philosophy in the Bedroom. In seven scenes, written somewhat like a dramatic script, a team of bon vivants impress on a young woman Eugenie the righteousness of living as a Libertine whose only purpose in life is the pursuit of selfish pleasure with a lot of practical learning. In each scene a new character is introduced with a new viewpoint of Sade's by de facto. Each scene finishes with some energetic debauching.

Sade's characters are sexually fluid- Le Chevalier, whilst confessing he prefers the buttocks of a young boy over the buttocks of a young woman, quickly reminds his hostess that she promised him the first go at Eugenie's virgin rectum (Charming, no?).

It was the last scene where I was finally utterly repulsed when Eugenie's mother comes to save her from the boudoir only to be accosted by the cast (now of six), assaulted, infected with syphillis and her orifices sewn up with thread and a rusty needle.

There are some interesting contradictions in Sade and they are most evident in this work- he advocates that all humans are sexual beings unrestricted by gender AND age (which makes a five year old as sexually permissible as a seventy year old) and that small children should be free to undergo any sexual exploration that pleases them. Conversely, he argues that a parent has utter control over their child- and suggests that abortion does not mean that a child can only be killed in utero, but that should a parent be displeased with their child at 14, they still can have it 'aborted'.

The parental control carries through to my favourite Sade (if one can have such a thing)- Eugenie de Franval. Eugenie is a teenage girl being raised by her father to essentially be his sex slave- and Lolita-like she is a willing accomplice (through psychological conditioning- Franval home schools her to be entirely submissive). This story follows Franval raising Eugenie (coincidentally unrelated to the Eugenie of the preceding work) as a sex puppet and the horrified reaction by her grandmother, Madame Farneille and her efforts to recover Eugenie to a life of chastity and virtue.

The Dialogue between a dying man and a priest is the stereotypical French philosophy- completely inpenetrable. Essentially, the gist is the Priest comes to offer the last rites to a man who resolutely refuses to be absolved and instead offers a Libertine rebuttal to the Priest's Catholicism. Heady stuff.

Sade is a big fan of anal sex as whilst he's all for rampant sex he's not so much into pregnancy. Then again, it's pretty much the only thing he's not into in these works- at one point or another various characters enjoy inhaling freshly minted farts, eating defecation, being penetrated with planks of wood covered in nails and strung up on walls like hunks of meat.

I also learnt that 'frig' which I use all the time in a casual context (eg = "friggin' hell") was actually a Revolutionary French word for masturbation.

What is shocking about Sade's work, asides from its sheer brutality, is that it dates from the late 1700s. Without a doubt, there is no way anyone would even dare trying to publish these books if he'd written them in 2004. Not a chance in hell (after the Jackson Nipple, I think that much of the US would actually collectively explode were it to be published). Though I admit, it would be with a certain relish to see Oprah interview the Marquis, or, better yet, endorse Justine in her Book Club.

They're definitely worth a look to see what all the fuss is about- but be prepared to be seriously disturbed by what you find.

Recommended: No