Sex & The Book / Ménage à trois, pursuit of the extreme and unbridled eroticism according to Almudena Grandes

Almudena Grandes, author of the scandalous novel The ages of Lulu, was born in 1960 in Madrid. She studied at the Complutense University of her city, graduating in History and Geography, before marrying the Spanish poet Luis Garcia Montero. She was already working in the publishing field when, in 1989, she made her debut with the work that made her famous, immediately translated into 19 languages ​​and winner of the prestigious award The Sonrisa Vertical, and from which the director Bigas Luna drew the homonymous film starring Francesca Neri. Among his later novels, they should be remembered Malena a name from Tango (also brought to the big screen by director Gerardo Herrero), Human geography atlas, The difficult years And Too much love. Also from the collection of short stories Woman models a film was made, by Juan Vicente Córdoba. In Italy it is published by Guanda.

He could have lay on top of Pablo without getting up from the sofa, but he preferred to kneel next to me. He has always been an esthete. I had not let him go, I continued to hold Pablo's cock tightly in my right hand and my new companion did not even allow him to touch it. I would decide when it was his turn or not to enter the game. It was mine, so I ran it again with my tongue, from bottom to top, and turned my head, to slide it over my mouth, moving my lips faster and faster, as if brushing my teeth, until it began to hurt my neck, and burn my ear, pressed against my shoulder, only then did I bring it to his mouth, which was next to me, guided him with my hand until he put it over his lips, kissed him, but as soon as he began to stroking it I took it away, to bring it back to him again, and see how he licked it, with all my tongue out, then I pulled my tongue out, to lick it myself, and passed it to him again, we continued like this for a long time, until he he didn't grab him between his lips and I didn't dare pull, I was the one to approach him and we began to suck him in two.


Lulu is fifteen when Pablo, a disturbing friend of her older brother Marcelo, initiates her into the pleasures of sex. Twenty-seven years old, a book of poems just published and all the charm of an intellectual and mature man: Lulù lets himself be led by Pablo in a murky erotic game, but not without a certain feeling. Years later, in fact, he returns from America and asks her, in order, to have anal sex and marry him. The secret of that marriage seems to be the absolute lack of inhibition in sharing one's perversions, but this is not enough for Lulu. With a boundless desire for freedom, in the constant desire to explore her limits, the woman leaves Pablo to throw herself into a tunnel of increasingly extreme and risky experiences, from which her husband, an infernal angel, will pull her out.

See also

Extreme sex

Sapiosexual: when it is intelligence that ignites eroticism

The vagina: anatomy and function of the female genital organ

In the passage reported, the marriage between Lulu and Pablo is still in its infancy. The two, in their nocturnal wanderings in search of excitement, meet Ely, a transsexual that Lulu decides to involve in a night of pleasure for three. Ely accompanies them to a kind of club in an elegant neighborhood, with a small bar counter and a dark corridor with green carpet, full of rooms. It is in one of these privè that Lulù begins to conduct the ménage à trois, careful to study the enigmatic reactions of Pablo, who at first remains completely impassive. Lulu and Ely take turns giving him oral sex. Lulu's excitement grows in the sense of power that comes from sharing a man whom sharing itself seems to make even more hers. Not surprisingly, husband and wife will continue the intercourse alone, while the guest will seem to be forgotten, as if his role had only been to trigger the fuse.

The forms of love that Grandes tells us with a fluvial, physical and never vulgar language, which hardly bears punctuation due to its strong emotional drive, surprise us with the irreducible desire underlying them: that of discovering in the one's own body and in that of others the limit of oneself, one's maturity, the acceptance of fear that threatens all our relationships. Lulu needs to get involved sexually despite recognizing that there may be less exhausting and violent ways to assert one's personal freedom. Fortunately, she has her Pablo to watch over her: it is love that teaches her to measure out light and shadow, to accompany her to the border and then to bring her back. Healthy and safe, or almost.

by Giuliana Altamura


Here you can read the previous appointment with the column, Sex & The Book / Bisexuality, perversion and sadism: extreme love told by Florence Dugas

A scene from the film "The Ages of Lulu"