An astoundingly well-calibrated mixture of legal reporting and literary analysis ... The Newland trials are rich texts, and Scott pores over every transcript page, looking for meaning.
A strange kind of legal drama. The usual pleasures of reading about the courtroom—the vicarious thrill of being both detective and jury—give way to the slower burn of cultural analysis. Scott treats the tale of Gayle and Miss X as a rich and layered text, in which the inconsistencies are not lies to be triumphantly exposed but symbols to be recursively interpreted ... Characteristically, Scott avoids taking any hard stances. But her examples make clear that the interests of the powerful have always determined what kinds of lies are deemed to invalidate sexual consent.
Probably because The Bed Trick was first published in Britain, where many readers knew how the story ended, Scott forfeits much of the potential narrative tension ... I found myself yearning for a version of the book where I didn’t know the outcome ... The courtroom never feels immediate in The Bed Trick ... Scott confesses to feeling 'frustrated by the transcripts,' which are marred by 'so many interruptions, narratives cut short and missing perspectives. There was so much I couldn’t see.' By the end of the book, the feeling was mutual.
Scott is less interested in whether this was the correct verdict than she is in investigating the larger meanings of this strange, sad trial, which exposed the private lives of both participants to ridicule ... Scott is a supremely good guide to this complex terrain, thoughtful, nuanced and agile.
When Scott is telling the two conflicting narratives laid out in the courtroom this is a riveting and revealing book that takes the reader deep into the processes of justice and law, but although Scott strives not to take sides, she has a point of view ... It seems strange to me that Scott (who is a rape victim and a lesbian) doesn’t give more weight to the idea that the sex act and the sexed body might have a particular relationship.
Fascinating ... Scott details the case while ruminating on its cultural implications, nimbly exploring the confusing labyrinth of British sexual offense laws and pulling in her own meditations on human sexuality. It’s a wild ride.
