Katrina Marson reminds the reader straight away that nearly one quarter of all Australian women, and 5 per cent of Australian men, have experienced sexual violence. (Those statistics are always considered to be chronically under-reported.) Violence, though, is by no means the only subject dissected in Marson's timely, accessible and thoughtful book.

Marson, highly qualified and deeply experienced in criminal law and justice, wants us as a community to set some legitimate expectations: promises to one another. First among those should be, Marson argues, a commitment to give young people the best chance we can. For her, one key is teaching youngsters about sex and associated questions of autonomy, power, limits, feelings, and seeking help. She maintains that such an education program has been consigned to the too-hard basket: "not important, not appropriate, not that easy". Her thesis is underpinned by a simple but dramatic comparison between sex education and swimming lessons. To learn about sex we sometimes seem just to throw youngsters into the pool and hope they do not drown. Some do.

Elaine Murphy's harrowing Look What You Made Me Do (Grand Central Publishing, $22.99) sets a high standard for examining one dimension of sex education, family violence. Both Murphy and Marson confront the problem of changing expectations, prejudices, habits and assumptions. Marson's focus is more extensive; she deals with many issues which could be addressed in educating young people about sexuality and relationships. She will provoke debate, about the content, focus, venue and effect of such education - this book opens that debate.

We in Australia have managed a few particularly successful public education campaigns, whether persuading drivers to wear seatbelts or weaning cigarette smokers off nicotine. Setting and embedding legitimate "sexpectations" will take more commitment and more imagination, partly because the problems and prejudices remain deeply enmeshed in issues of power, status and masculinity.

Marson presents nine stories of couples (broadly defined) to illuminate and make more personal her argument. Those "fictionalised vignettes" might have served as parables, but, in this case, they are more sobering morality tales. Some are confronting, others excruciating, but all of them are quite well-constructed accounts of introductions to sex in many forms.

In addition, Marson draws heavily on the interviews, exchanges and discussions she conducted during a 2019 Churchill Fellowship. That combination of stories, anecdotes and analysis works quite powerfully together, especially when Marson concentrates on ways in which we might talk about our bodies "in a healthy, respectful, confident way". Her rigour extends to terminology, particularly in a sensitive exploration of the notion of "unwanted" sex. Both rigour and vigour may be demonstrated in discussion of her proposals.