Story of O for the Noughties

By Rosa Mundi

Quercus, 328pp, 12.99

FROM THE SEXY COVER depicting a woman disrobing, to its publisher's claims that Rosa Mundi is a pseudonym for one of Britain's best-known female novelists, Vocational Girl is a tease in which appearances can and will deceive.

Initially this promises to be an erotic romp narrated by a bawd who revels in her sexual expertise: "Sometimes I feel it's what I'm best at; what I feel I'm for." But as the story unfolds - a bit like its ever-available heroine - it provokes more mental than physical arousal, prompting me to push back its millefeuille layers in an attempt to ascertain its meaning.

Brainy, beautiful Vanessa, 26, has a double first in Philosophy and a home library rivalling the Bodleian. She works the reception desk at a trendy Covent Garden hotel, but its concierge also pimps her to visitors. Vanessa insists she's no professional, but she is, really. How else did she earn that wardrobe of designer labels and acquire such intimate knowledge of Knightsbridge's boutiques? She is also bi-polar, and has been advised - by a physician with a sense of humour, if not a clear grasp of neurology - that shopping and sex can keep her mood swings under control.

On the longest day of the year, handsome, wheelchair-bound Alden X (Alden means Old Friend) rolls into her life. He's a musician, interior designer and applied conceptual artist - a pretentious poseur, in other words. She adopts the persona of Joan Bennett (movie lovers, feel free to giggle), a virtuous nursery school teacher moonlighting to pay for a course in teen counselling.

Like the novelist, Vanessa relishes this chance to shed her identity. "For hit and run sex it is useful to be someone else: if you feel bad about it later for any reason, why then, it wasn't you that did it ... Being Joan as well as Vanessa added spice to the expectation of adventure." Thus begins a perverse summer of love.

Intelligent Vanessa's not very clever. Like every other tragic heroine, she falls for the cruel, dashing idiot. Worse, she thinks she has the upper hand, what with her vast experience and his disability. Falling into a too-common trap, she imagines her sexual malleability will make her "the one" who wins Alden's heart. Then again, she also believes that she's one of Ishtar's sacred harlots made holy via intercourse.

As Joan, this minx is able to "do" a Madonna, play-acting being touched for the very first time. In due course she samples the entire menu of sexual fantasies: encountering a pervy old doctor, instructing an Arab virgin in the art of love, pleasuring a famous tennis player, indulging in girl-on-girl action, even playing the role of madam by selling her twin sisters' virginity.

Above all, she attempts to administer some sexual healing, both as muse to a blocked painter and with Alden, who's not only crippled but unable to climax.

The lavish attention paid to fashion and furnishings made me think of this as The Story of O with hydraulics, though unlike the French novel, which took itself utterly seriously, this functions nicely as a wicked, laugh-out-loud send-up of the modern art scene. But, above all, Vocational Girl is about power, and as such is a deeply disturbing reminder of how men psychologically and physically destroy women.

The writing is so incisive and sly that, as in life, both sexes must accept culpability for these acts of annihilation. All in all, there's more here than meets the eye: the author's identity is just the first of many intriguing riddles.