All on Sunday - Don Elliott

The family shame was their only fame!

This is one I picked up about a year ago for the princely sum of $9 from a local book dealer. I'd already learned, thanks to the terrific Stark House Press that Don Elliott is really Robert Silverberg. Silverberg wrote dozens of these titles back in the heyday of smut paperbacks, two of which, Gang Girl and Sex Bum, have been re-issued for your pleasure by Stark House.

Ember Library Books, 1966

There really isn't a plot to All on Sunday. All of the events in the novel take place on a single day where the Hallowell family, Ken and Kate, and their children Avis and Johnny, go about chasing down their own afternoon delights with wild abandon. Ken Hallowell is a 42 year old suburbanite square, proud of his virility and his mistress, Laurel (more on her to come). He wakes up with a woody, next to his attractive wife Kate, early on Sunday morning. He debates a morning tussle in the sheets with her, before deciding to save his reserves for Laurel. After breakfast, he informs Kate that he's off for 18 holes on the links with his buddies. He throws his clubs into the trunk of the car and speeds off to Laurel's apartment like a kid tearing off to the candy store.

Laurel is one of those icy-hot babes that make an art out of twisting men like Ken around her finger. Within moments after his arrival, she has Ken kissing her feet, and begging her for it. Throughout their afternoon date, she'll have Ken on the ropes, alternatively teasing and pleasuring him, driving him (and the reader!) mad with desire. And she's got a special surprise in store for Ken that just might be more than his square suburban proprieties can handle!

Johnny Hallowell, Ken and Kate's teenage son, has an afternoon lined up with Donna, the butcher's wife. Donna is one of those babes with a kinky streak a mile wide. In no time flat she's initiating Johnny into the world of latex, leather, whips and bondage. It turns out Johnny is quite an apt pupil.

Avis Hallowell, the beautiful, virginal teenage daughter has an afternoon picnic planned with her boyfriend Fred. Avis is a little worried, because just the night before she and Fred had engaged in some heavy petting resulting in Fred's hand exploring under her skirt. Reluctantly, she put the kibosh on the necking, leaving Fred high and dry. She feels bad about it now, because she really wants to prove her love to Fred, but doesn't want to be that kind of a girl...or does she? Turns out, we all know the answer to that one, especially after Avis decides to wear her sexiest pink underwear under her tightest shorts, so tight they're ready to bust at the seams. Fred is about to have one picnic he'll never forget!

All of the Hallowells are off, leaving Kate home alone, bored and frustrated. Before marriage, Kate was a wild girl in the Greenwich Village scene, hanging out and getting high with her bohemian friends, sharing herself in numerous ways, even allowing one of her artist friends to make a plaster cast of her magnificent boobs. Since then, marriage has been nice and all, but lets face it, twenty years of life with Ken hasn't exactly measured up to the wild promise of youth she so fondly recalls. Kate is just tipping a bottle of sherry to help pass a lonely Sunday afternoon when the phone rings. Her old roommate Elinor is in town for the day and interested in swinging by to say hi to her old pal Kate. When Elinor shows up in taxi a few minutes later, we instantly know that Kate's afternoon is about to get a whole lot more exiting, like toot sweet! Turns out, Elinor is a writer of travel books which provide a jet set globe-trotting lifestyle that Kate could only dream of. But more than that, Elinor is also the woman behind a massive underground bestseller named The Women of Halfworld, a novel about Lesbians.

Elinor grinned. "Sure. That's how it was. I'm a Lesbian now, Kate. I gave up men ten years ago. Didn't you realize? I'm a dyke, sweetie."

And with that, Kate's suburban exterior is quickly shed, along with her clothes, leaving Elinor to initiate her into the wild pleasures of a love that shall remain unspoken.

All in all, All on Sunday was a fun book to read. I didn't go into it expecting a whole lot, and enjoyed the way Elliott (Silverberg) juggled the afternoon's events. Also, the writing was effortless. Even in a "cheap little smut book" like this, Silverberg shows just why his work, even his hack-work, is always readable. Better than today's self-indulgent stuff that is churned out by those oh-so-earnest young artistes with ivy-league credentials we're told to slaver over in reviews heard on NPR. Guys like Silverberg and others have already been there and done that, sweetie!