Juicy Bits

London, 1998. Erotic publisher Liz Sharp is preparing to risk the fortunes of her successful company, Xtremis, on one book: a definitive erotic masterpiece for the approaching new century. She offers novelist Jay Stern millions to write it and commissions ambitious market researcher Chloe to provide him with the essential evidence — a large-scale survey of what women actually want.

But desire proves less easy to categorise than the statistics suggest.

Around Liz, a network of apparently separate lives begins to connect. Chloe’s polished marriage to Leonard conceals secrets on both sides. Bella, Liz’s cleaner and a skilled mask-maker, has for years been paid by Leonard for mysterious Wednesday afternoons that involve neither sex nor an easily defined relationship. Bella shares her life with Jo, a prison warder whose friendship with an imprisoned woman produces another, very different kind of writing. Their friend Sef, an environmental activist preoccupied with his inability to perform sexually, adds his own confusion about the distinction between desire and sex.

Meanwhile Liz’s reunion with Jay revives memories of Sheridan, the woman who once connected them, and of an unpublished manuscript abandoned decades earlier.

As London grows hotter, surveys, manuscripts, marriages, friendships and sexual arrangements begin to collide. Juicy Bits examines the gap between what people say they want, what others assume they want, and the desires they may not yet have found words for.