Exit to Eden: Anne Rice’s BDSM Island Novel

In 1985 Anne Rice published the novel Exit to Eden. It first appeared under the pen name Anne Rampling and later under Rice’s own name. The machinery is a romance built out of BDSM: an isolated high-end resort island, submissives who have been trained, a formal auction, and a mistress who falls in love with the slave she picks. The book is a major stop on Rice’s erotic line outside the vampire novels, set beside the Sleeping Beauty series she wrote under another pen name. Selling a BDSM-resort fantasy this way came well before the mass-market “red room” brand. Everyone in the book is an adult.

The Club, the auction, Elliot Slater

Lisa Kelly runs The Club, also called Eden, a high-end island resort. Clients live there as Master or Mistress. People training to be slaves usually serve a term of about six months to two years, are paid when the term ends, and are auctioned by elite trainers. Lisa is head female trainer and a co-founder, so she has first pick. She chooses Elliot Slater. Inside the formal D/s roles and the training ranks, the first chemistry turns into love.

What the 1994 film did to it

In 1994 Savoy Pictures adapted the novel, with Dana Delany as Lisa and Paul Mercurio as Elliot. The studio rewrote the plot heavily and added buddy cops played by Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O’Donnell, shifting the weight from BDSM romance to a jewel-thief comedy. Critics panned the result. The D/s relationship that carries the book becomes set dressing. The film has its own entry.

Exit to Eden sits with Anne Rice and Anne Rampling’s erotica, with BDSM resort fantasy, and with literary SM romance of the 1980s.