Three Women - Drei Frauen

It took me a long time to fall asleep last night. I had gotten through the first of each of the Maggie, Lina and Sloane chapters.

I am not interested in judging women for what they want, who they want to sleep with, what sex acts they're cool with. I actually love talking to other women about sex. What bothered me was that, in these first few chapters, nothing was about what any of these women wanted.

And so, less than 20% into the book, I'm asking myself ... who was clamoring for this book? Why this “research”? For eight years of research or whatever she did, why was this the result?

Taddeo has a way of writing that makes me not believe what she's telling me. It's like it was written to be both titillating and give you a sensual-floaty feeling in your brain in the way she writes, but I'm really uncomfortable, at page 58, with all three of these stories, as well as Taddeo's own story of her mother. She victim-blames her own mother! And then asks if maybe her mother actually liked being followed home by a masturbating creeper every single day!

I am disturbed by the idea that Lina's gang rape is not called out as rape, just because her inner monologue is that she wants people to like her and she's been too heavily drugged to remember much of the experience.

I am trying to articulate how much Sloane's story bothered me, because it kind of snuck up on me. And like I said, I am not judging what she wants at all. What really messed with my head was what she obviously didn't want, and that was for her husband to actually have sex with someone else.

...suddenly Sloane's husband was behind this other woman ... and something inside Sloane stopped. ... She could feel it, her actual soul melt out and skitter from the room. ... Sloan was confused; it had been a fantasy of hers to watch her husband fuck another woman, one she'd never quite expressed out loud ... . Suddenly now it felt terrifically wrong. In the near future, she would fantasize about Richard fucking the girl and it would turn her on, but for now she felt she was leaking out from the inside. ... There was no going back. Even in the most complex of conjured realms, Sloane could not imagine a time machine convincing enough to take them back from this.

And I'm just ... not comfortable with this at all. Because even though Richard stopped to make sure his wife was okay, and she clearly wasn't, they didn't stop what they were doing. During sex is not the best time to set boundaries, so I wish that he'd stopped and sent the girl away so they could talk about it. That's the only way I can imagine this third of the story having anything to do with what Sloane herself actually desires.

I'm unsettled.
I didn't want to keep reading after that.
I don't need to be reading this.

I think Lisa Taddeo is a good storyteller, as I did find the stories of these three women compelling. I just disagree that this book is about women's desire. This is a book that shows, pretty graphicly, the ways in which men's desire can be used to abuse women. Interesting but misleading.

It only took me so long because I didn't want it to ever end. Thank you Lisa Taddeo for your service. Forever indebted.

Three women, three very different lives. Written in a very engaging way and has you in its grip. Which I can really appreciate.

Very insightful fiction/nonfiction book on how vulnerable sexual desires are and how the act of sex itself it also vulnerable. How it can be used and abused but also how and why it gives joy and pleasure. Absolutely loved it and the message is crystal clear throughout the entire book

so I went into this not realising/treating it as a work of fiction rather than non-fiction and honestly I think it works better if you do so.

it'll be interesting to see how the tv adaptation works when that's released later this year

and this took 10 years of gathering these infos? and all these endings make no sense really. what do we even learn from this book? also the chapters are so messy i had to read one woman's story at a time. couldn't focus reading like it is. i don't get what the point in that is. why are there no quotation marks? takes you ages to understand and get used to that lol

Very interesting but so depressing

the topics touched on in three women are so important and so core to what it means to be a woman in this world. but while reading it I felt as though I'm not yet old or experienced enough to truly and properly appreciate it. it will definitely be a book that I revisit later into my 20s and 30s.

Alright, I'm not a huge fan of non-fiction; consequently, I hated this book. The grammar is trash, the people in the book are annoying, and there isn't a single point to any of their stories. It follows the lives of three different women who have each had their own sexual trauma so they decide to become home wreckers? Idk. I had a hard time identifying with any of them. Dear Lisa Taddeo, please learn how to use commas and quotation marks or hire better editors to fix this for you. It wasn't stylistic, it was frustrating. Thank you.

What Roxane said.