Bonk (Roach) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
In her previous books, Stiff and a follow-up, Spook, Mary Roach set out to make creepy topics (cadavers, the afterlife) fun. In Bonk…she takes an entertaining topic and showcases its creepier side. And then she makes the creepy funny. Intended as much for amusement as for enlightenment, Bonk is Roach's foray into the world of sex research, mostly from Alfred Kinsey onward, but occasionally harking back to the ancient Greeks and medievals (equally unenlightened). Roach belongs to a particular strain of science writer; she's interested less in scientific subjects than in the ways scientists study their subjects—less, in this case, in sex per se than in the laboratory dissection of sex.
Pamela Paul - New York Times

[M]orbidity was a basic part of [her previous] books’ reporting.... Certainly that formula works for circus sideshows, with which Bonk has too many interests in common. The penile mishaps..., severings...and surgeries cited by Ms. Roach are nothing if not memorable, but her book consistently undermines its own discoveries. So Bonk uneasily mixes revulsion with "those rare, shining moments when urology approaches high comedy."... What emerges from this experience? One party-perfect anecdote and not much interesting information.
Janet Maslin - New York Times


In keeping with her popular previous volumes Stiff and Spook, Bonk shows Mary Roach to be a meticulous researcher with a passion for the details most likely to make you queasy…Roach is funny and…as insurance against a dull cocktail party, Bonk can't be beat.
Rick Weiss - Washington Post


Roach is one of those rare writers who can tackle the most obscure unpleasantness and distill the data into a hilarious and informative package. . . . It’s a wonderful read, sprinkled with facts you can quote to amaze your friends.
San Francisco Chronicle


Roll over, Kinsey. Mary Roach has done it again. Like Stiff, her improbable page-turner about cadavers, Bonk proves that full-bodied research can be riveting.
Oprah Magazine


Roach is not like other science writers. She doesn't write about genes or black holes or Schrodinger's cat. Instead, she ventures out to the fringes of science, where the oddballs ponder how cadavers decay (in her debut, Stiff) and whether you can weigh a person's soul (in Spook). Now she explores the sexiest subject of all: sex, and such questions as, what is an orgasm? How is it possible for paraplegics to have them? What does woman want, and can a man give it to her if her clitoris is too far from her vagina? At times the narrative feels insubstantial and digressive (how much do you need to know about inseminating sows?), but Roach's ever-present eye and ear for the absurd and her loopy sense of humor make her a delectable guide through this unesteemed scientific outback. The payoff comes with subjects like female orgasm (yes, it's complicated), and characters like Ahmed Shafik, who defies Cairo's religious repressiveness to conduct his sex research. Roach's forays offer fascinating evidence of the full range of human weirdness, the nonsense that has often passed for medical science and, more poignantly, the extreme lengths to which people will go to find sexual satisfaction.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Not to be missed: the martial art of yin diao gung (“genitals hanging kung fu”), monkey sex athletes, and the licensing of porn stars’ genitals for blow-up reproductions. To stay on the ethical side of human-subjects experimentation, Roach offers herself as research subject several times, resulting in some of her best writing. —Patricia Monaghan
Booklist


Wondering whether orgasms make sows more fertile? Turn to Roach for the answer. One of the funniest and most madcap of science writers, the author has approached sticky subjects to hilarious effect in her two previous books. Stiff (2003) looked at the many uses to which human cadavers have been put, while Spook (2005) told of science's attempts to understand the afterlife. Her latest is no less captivating or entertaining, as she flings wide the closed doors behind which the scientific study of coitus has traditionally been conducted. Roach details the careers of sex researchers Alfred Kinsey, William Masters and Virginia Johnson, Marie Bonaparte (Napoleon's great-grand-niece) and porn-star-turned-Ph.D. Annie Sprinkle, among others. Such researchers "to this day, endure ignorance, closed minds, righteousness, and prudery," she writes. "Their lives are not easy. But their cocktail parties are the best." Emulating her subjects' daring spirit, Roach displays a firm belief that there is no question too goofy to ask-or, barring that, to Google. What happens when you implant a monkey testicle in a man: Does he get more vital, or does he get an infection? She explores centuries of research into such questions as how penile implants work (a pump could be involved); whether surgically relocating the clitoris can lead to better sex (no); why the human penis is shaped as it is (to scoop out competitors' sperm); and what exactly is going on when it enters a vagina (shockingly, there is still much to learn). Apart from its considerable comic value, the book also emulates its predecessors by illustrating a precept of scientific research: The passion to know, in the face of censure and propriety, is what advances our understanding of the world. A lively, hilarious and informative look at science's dirty secrets.
Kirkus Reviews