Quick Take
- Narration: Sara Pascoe reading her own material is the right call, her comedic timing and genuine intellectual excitement about her research come through clearly, making a dense subject feel conversational.
- Themes: Female sexuality, the economics of desire, sex work and stigma
- Mood: Funny and earnest in equal proportion, occasionally uncomfortable in productive ways
- Verdict: Frankie Boyle called it a genuinely hilarious explanation of the science of sex, and that’s roughly right, though the funny never fully obscures the serious inquiry underneath.
I came to Sex Power Money about two weeks after finishing Animal, Pascoe’s earlier book about female biology and evolutionary psychology. I was curious whether the second book would feel like a retreat to familiar territory or an expansion of it. The answer, I found over a very engrossing listening weekend, is that it’s genuinely both, and the tension between those two things is part of what makes it interesting.
Pascoe is a British stand-up comedian who belongs to a tradition of performers who take their comedy seriously as a vehicle for ideas. Deborah Frances-White, who blurbs this with characteristic enthusiasm, is a peer in this regard. What Pascoe does in Sex Power Money that Animal only partially attempted is to bring the investigative methodology closer to the center of the text. She is open about having gone out and done research, conducted interviews, and changed her mind about things. That kind of intellectual honesty is rare in books that also contain jokes about masturbation.
The Conundrum of Heterosexuality as a Structural Device
Pascoe’s central organizing question, whether we’ll ever escape what she calls the Conundrum of Heterosexuality, is announced early and returned to consistently enough that the book feels like it has a thesis rather than just a theme. The conundrum she’s identifying involves the way desire, power, and economic inequality interact in heterosexual relationships in ways that neither party fully understands or controls. She approaches this from multiple angles: evolutionary biology, feminist theory, economic analysis, and her own anecdotal experience as a woman who has both experienced the dynamic and thought about it enough to find it genuinely puzzling. That combination of rigor and personal investment is what gives the material weight.
Where the Funny Lives and Where It Doesn’t Quite
One reviewer makes the point that some chapters feel extraneous, specifically citing an extended discussion of the film Indecent Proposal as losing the thread. This is fair. Pascoe’s associative method, which is a strength in stand-up, can occasionally send the audiobook into extended digressions that are more interesting to her than to the listener. The chapter on the sex industry is more focused and more effective, it’s the section where Pascoe’s genuine anger at how sex workers are treated by both legislation and public opinion sharpens her prose considerably. Her question about why people don’t care about the welfare of the people they masturbate to is one of the more pointed ethical provocations in the book, and she doesn’t soften it.
What the Blurbs Don’t Tell You About the Runtime
At nearly eleven hours, this is a substantial commitment. Animal ran considerably shorter, and the expanded length here means the audiobook has more room for both brilliance and meandering. The sections on anatomy and evolutionary biology are genuinely educational and often funny in the way Pascoe intends. The sections on money and gender economics are more uneven, important and relevant but occasionally reading like a journalist’s notes that didn’t fully make it into essay form. The single Audible review that pushes back constructively notes the lack of endnotes, which is a fair criticism for a book that makes many specific factual claims. Self-narration is the right choice regardless: Pascoe delivers her own material with the authority of someone who has tested these ideas in front of audiences and knows which lines land.
Who Should Listen / Who Should Skip
Listeners who enjoyed Animal will almost certainly want this. Listeners coming in cold should know that this is funnier and more serious than a comedy memoir and less polished and more digressive than a proper work of popular science, it exists in the productive middle ground between those categories. If you find explicitly feminist analysis of sexuality tiresome, this isn’t for you. If you find that analysis interesting but want it delivered with genuine wit and some intellectual humility, Pascoe is doing something worth your eleven hours.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to have read or listened to Animal first to get the most from Sex Power Money?
No, though Animal provides useful context for Pascoe’s methodology and her particular way of combining personal experience with biological research. Sex Power Money works as a standalone, but readers who liked Animal will find this expands the project rather than repeating it.
How explicit is the content? The title suggests adult subject matter.
It’s frank and explicit in language when discussing sexuality, anatomy, and sex work. Pascoe approaches the subject as an adult who has thought carefully about it, which means the content is explicit in the service of honesty rather than for shock value.
The book is nearly 11 hours long. Does it sustain that length, or does it lose momentum?
Unevenly. The chapters on sexuality and the sex industry are consistently strong. Some middle sections on economic history and the Indecent Proposal analysis are weaker and feel like they needed more editorial attention. The opening and closing sections are the most focused.
Is this primarily a comedy audiobook or a nonfiction essay collection? The genre categorization seems ambiguous.
Both, genuinely. Pascoe is a working comedian who takes her research seriously, so the book functions as neither pure comedy nor pure analysis. If you come expecting stand-up material, you’ll be surprised by the rigor. If you come expecting sociology, you’ll be surprised by the jokes. The hybrid is mostly successful.
