'Smut: Two Unseemly Stories' consists of two novellas, 'The Greening of Mrs Donaldson' and 'The Shielding of Mrs Forbes'. Both are slight but well-observed and nimbly narrated stories about sex and manners.
In 'The Greening of Mrs Donaldson', a newly widowed woman has to make ends meet; she takes in lodgers (initially a medical student and her boyfriend) and finds herself employed at a local medical school as a standardized or simulated patient (a patient instructor), joining several other stalwart characters in feigning illnesses and ailments for the educational benefit of training doctors. When her tenants do not have the money to pay their rent, they find another way of reimbursing Mrs Donaldson. 'The Shielding of Mrs Forbes' is about the marriage of vain handsome Graham Forbes to a wealthy, although not particularly beautiful, woman, much to the frustrated dismay of his mother. In both novellas, secrets about sex and surprising erotic arrangments threaten the measured, middle class lives of the Donaldson and Forbes families.
