Not Your Ordinary Housewife (Nikki Stern, A&U)

This is not a light-hearted story about a woman’s foray into the world of illicit sex. What begins as a vibrant fairytale of love, punk and art, quickly unravels with an air of seamy doom. The unflinchingly graphic, tell-all epic about a successful Canberra porn empire is told with honesty and humour by the woman at its centre—the star of Australia’s bestselling porn film The Horny Housewife. Having spent the first eight months of her life in an orphanage before being adopted by a prominent Jewish family in Melbourne and attending MLC (school uniforms can be useful later in life), university graduate Stern became a promising glass artist but had to give up this career due to an eye condition. In Amsterdam, aged 27, she met her future husband, Paul—the extremely talented but damaged 19-year-old Dutch-Canadian cartoonist whose marketing genius would convert her into an extremely profitable sexual commodity. Ultimately a story of survival, Stern’s book describes the complexities of life as a porn star, stripper, sex worker and mother of three—it’s not pretty. On the upside, having discovered a hidden talent for cataloguing, she now has a new career as a librarian.

Paula Grunseit is a freelance journalist, editor and reviewer

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Category: Reviews