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* THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER * 'Joan is an unforgettable anti-heroine. I don't think I'll ever stop thinking about her' Elizabeth Day 'So insanely good and true and twisted it'll make your teeth sweat' Olivia Wilde 'Like a series of grenades exploding' Marian Keyes I drove myself out of New York City where a man shot himself in front of me. He was a gluttonous man and when his blood came out it looked like the blood of a pig. That's a cruel thing to think, I know. He did it in a restaurant where I was having dinner with another man, another married man. Do you see how this is going? But I wasn't always that way. I am depraved. I hope you like me. MEET JOAN: SUMMER 2021 A 2021 Highlight for: Guardian - Sunday Express - Independent - New Statesman - Evening Standard - Cosmopolitan - Red - Grazia - Daily Mail - Daily Express - The Week - Irish Times - i - The Sun
Hinweis: Dieser Artikel kann nur an eine deutsche Lieferadresse ausgeliefert werden.
Hinweis: Dieser Artikel kann nur an eine deutsche Lieferadresse ausgeliefert werden.
Bis vor Kurzem dachten wir, promisk zu leben oder wenigstens zu reden sei besonders emanzipiert.
Lisa Taddeo zeigt in ihrem Roman über eine abgeklärte Romantik-Verächterin, was aus der Idee wurde
VON TANJA REST
Gar nicht so lang her, dass sich an Dienstagabenden auf bundesdeutschen Fernsehsofas Frauengrüppchen zusammenrotteten, eine schöne Flasche Prosecco plus kalorienarmes Reisgebäck auf dem Beistelltisch und die große Sisterhood im Herzen, während der Mann in der Küche hockte und augenrollend, aber mit sich zufrieden ein Bierchen zischte. Das war die „Sex and the City“-Zeit, sie galt als frauenbefreiend.
Was fuhr es aufrührerisch durch die aneinandergekuschelten Sofabesetzerinnen hindurch, wenn die vier New Yorker Ladies beim Krabbensalat ihren Sex und ihre öligen Kerle durchhechelten (denen sie nach dem Lunch dann wieder nachjagten, Hauptsache gutaussehend und das Jahresgehalt im oberen sechsstelligen Bereich). Die Serie mag viel für Manolo Blahnik und Redakteurinnen der Cosmopolitan getan haben, den Frauen hat sie rückblickend nur den Traum vom begehbaren Schuhschrank eingepflanzt.
Da sind wir 20 Jahre später, äh, weiter. Mister Big heißt in Lisa Taddeos Roman Big Sky, er tritt selbst nicht auf, ist aber der einzige Mann, von dem die Ich-Erzählerin Joan glaubt, ihn wirklich zu lieben. Big Sky ist außerdem verheiratet und ein Dreckskerl wie alle Männer in diesem Buch, aber das macht nichts, denn Joan definiert sinnstiftende Beziehungen so: „Wie ich mich nach der Liebe von Männern verzehrte, die meine Liebe nie erwidern würden. Wie ich Frauen nicht ausstehen konnte, die mich brauchten. Ich machte mich krank.“ So viel zum Thema Boy meets Girl, so viel zur großen, tröstenden Schwesternschaft. Warmes Identifikationsangebot der Hauptfigur? Es gibt keines.
Joan, um es gleich deutlich zu sagen, ist das Miststück, das dir den Mann ausspannt und ihn nach Gebrauch gelangweilt wieder wegwirft, einfach so, weil sie gerade Bock drauf hat. Sie ist die Bitch, die mit deiner besten Freundin anbandelt, eben weil sie sie aus tiefstem Herzen verachtet. Sie ist das Luder, das in deinen Shop spaziert, die 1000-Dollar-Sandalen von Lanvin anprobiert, und kaum drehst du ihr den Rücken zu, ist sie damit schon über alle Berge. Immerhin ist sie einsam, kreuzunglücklich und kann sich selbst nicht ausstehen. Ist aber nur ein kleiner Trost.
Es beginnt gleich mal mit einem Knall, hier die ersten beiden Sätze: „Ich musste weg aus New York, wo sich ein Mann vor meinen Augen erschoss. Es war ein gefräßiger Mann, und das Blut, das aus ihm herausströmte, sah aus wie das Blut eines Schweins.“ Der Mann, der Joan hier beim Dinner mit ihrem Zweitlover erwischt hat, hieß Vic. Er war ihr Chef und Sugar Daddy, der sie in den teureren Restaurants von New York aushielt, wofür sie hier und da mit Sex bezahlte. Er war außerdem in sie verliebt, was ihm – „Liebe von Männern“ siehe oben – nicht sonderlich bekommen ist. Von nun an hat Joan die Witwe an der Hacke, die ihr Hassmails schreibt, und Vics Teenagertochter, die sie umbringen will. Auf ihrer Agenda steht aber erst mal Wichtigeres.
Sie setzt sich in ihr Auto und fährt nach Los Angeles, unterwegs hat sie nur deshalb Sex mit einem Mann, weil er einen Cowboyhut trägt und John Ford heißt. Im Topanga Canyon mietet Joan ein Haus, sie möbliert es mit Hass, Verachtung und dem diffusen Wunsch nach Rache. Ebenfalls auf dem Grundstück leben: Kevin, ein alternder ehemaliger Rapstar; Lenny, ihr sehr alter und lüsterner Vermieter; und River, der in einer Jurte haust, geil aussieht, jünger ist als sie und ein bisschen doof.
Was also will Joan in L.A.? Sie will Alice treffen, bei der es sich, wie man auf halbem Weg erfährt, um das Nebenprodukt einer heimlichen Affäre ihres verstorbenen Vaters handelt. Alice arbeitet in einem Yogastudio und ist so lieb, dünn und schön, dass sich Mordlust und Hingerissenheit bei Joan die Waage halten. Na ja, fast: „Sie war ungeschminkt, wofür ich sie am liebsten gekillt hätte. Aber zuerst wollte ich sie in einen Käfig stecken, mästen, mit Hormonen und Schweinebacken und Fanta füttern. Ihr die Zähne ausschlagen und die Augenbrauen abrasieren. Sie sollte hässlich sterben.“ Schöne Grüße auch vom „American Psycho“! Die Halbschwestern freunden sich dann wahrhaftig an, was ihnen – „Frauen, die mich brauchten“ siehe oben – allerdings nicht sonderlich gut bekommt.
Außerdem in „Animal“: ein Wall-Street-Broker, der für 1000 Dollar getreten werden will; diverse Vergewaltigungen; sehr viele mit Alkohol runtergespülte Tabletten (Ambien, Xanax, Klonopin); die surreal-hyperrealistische Beschreibung einer Fehlgeburt; und ein tatsächlich mörderisches Finale, nachdem 376 Seiten lang (doch, ehrlich) gar nicht so viel passiert ist.
Die amerikanische Autorin und Journalistin Lisa Taddeo, 41, hat mit dem dokumentarischen Buch „Drei Frauen“ 2019 ein Sensationsdebüt hingelegt. Platz 1 der Sachbuch-Bestsellerliste der New York Times, euphorische Kritiken weltweit, ein dickes, schweißiges Bündel Preise, eine TV-Adaption, das volle Programm. Acht Jahre hatte sie damit verbracht, das Gefühls- und Sexleben von drei ganz unterschiedlichen Frauen zu recherchieren, was in sich schon greller Wahnsinn war und zu schmerzhaft präzisen Porträts führte. Dabei schadete es auch nicht, dass die Themen Vergewaltigung, Machtmissbrauch und Promiskuität 2019 mitten in die „Me too“-Debatte hineinplatzten. „Animal“ ist nun ihr erster, mit Spannung erwarteter Roman. Man kann ihn so oder so lesen: Als Hinrichtung der letzten, um Erbarmen winselnden Reste von Romantik, die der Beziehung zwischen Frau und Mann noch innewohnten. Oder als Horrorgemälde, „Me too“ im Blutrausch sozusagen.
Nichts an diesem Buch ist subtil. Nicht die grob zusammengenagelte und gänzlich unplausible Handlung. Nicht die durch die Bank traumatisierten Opfer-Täter-Frauen und schon gar nicht die Männer, die allesamt hassens- wie bedauernswerte Schweinehunde sind, schwach, verlogen, ständig notgeil, der letzte Witz eigentlich; wenn sie nicht so eklig wären.
Was Joan angeht, so hat die Autorin der kleinbürgerlichen Versuchung nicht widerstehen können, auch sie mit einem (Kindheits-) Trauma auszustatten, das in Rückblenden quälend langsam enthüllt wird und ihr Fühlen und Handeln im Jetzt nachvollziehbar machen soll. Damit auch wirklich jeder kapiert, mit welchen Dezibelwerten die inneren Widersprüche der Joan-Figur aufeinander zurasen, läuft ihre zwanghafte Selbstanalyse als Subtext immer mit. Also: „An diesem Punkt in meinem Leben war mir bewusst, dass meine Fixierung auf Schönheit zu hundert Prozent mit meinem Vater zusammenhing. Wenn man jung ist und mitbekommt, wie der eigene Vater seine Wahl trifft, will man unweigerlich das sein, wofür er sich entscheidet.“ Okay, das sollte eigentlich reichen.
Aber nicht doch, es gibt zusätzlich zum Ich auch noch ein Du, an das sich Joans Weisheiten richten und bei dem es sich - Cliffhanger! Wird erst auf den letzten Seiten enthüllt! – um ihre eingebildete oder tatsächliche Tochter handelt. Nachricht ans Du: „Ich wünsche mir, dass du nicht durch die Welt gehst im Glauben, du müsstest eine vermeintliche Leere in dir mit dem Fleisch eines anderen Menschen ausfüllen. Auch deshalb erzähle ich diese Geschichte.“
Lässt man Plot, Personal und Erzählkonstrukt mal außen vor, weiß Lisa Taddeo immer noch ein bisschen zu gut, was sie am allerbesten kann: Worte so aneinanderreihen, dass sie zu rappen beginnen, ihre Verächtlichkeit und schiere Schlagzahl einen Sog entwickeln, dem man nicht auskommt. Es ist erschöpfend. Und eitel. Und hochgradig artifiziell. Es führt in einem wirklichen Frauenleben in die totale Sackgasse, jedenfalls nirgendwohin, wo man gern Nudeln essen, Sex haben und Kinder großziehen würde.
Auf der heilenden Vorstellungsebene jedoch funktioniert „Animal“ hervorragend. Man unterschätze nicht den Fruststau von Frauen, die Carrie Bradshaw mal für eine feministische Ikone hielten und heute vor einer allumarmenden Zumutung namens „Wokeness“ stehen. Wohin jetzt mit dem Hass, verdammt nochmal?! Herzlich willkommen: Jeder Männerblick in diesem Buch ist eine potenzielle Vergewaltigung, jeder Aphorismus ein strafender Tritt in die Weichteile, ein gellendes Frauen-Yeah. Es ist mit anderen Worten eine Lektüre, die man hinterher mit leiser Abscheu und tiefer innerer Befriedigung neben den gesammelten Walser ins Bücherregal schiebt.
Wohin jetzt mit
dem Hass,
verdammt nochmal?!
Unterschätze nie die Zerstörungswut einer gekränkten Frau: die mit Schweineblut übergossene Sissy Spacek in der Stephen-King-Verfilmung „Carrie“.
Foto: Imago
Lisa Taddeo: Animal.
Roman. Aus dem Englischen von Anne Kristin Mittag. Piper, München 2021. 416 Seiten, 22 Euro.
DIZdigital: Alle Rechte vorbehalten – Süddeutsche Zeitung GmbH, München
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"A provocative exploration of what happens when women are pushed beyond the brink, and what comes after the reckoning."
-Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire
"A propulsive literary thriller . . . Taddeo's debut novel is fearless."
-Los Angeles Times
"Animal will confirm Taddeo's status as a pre-eminent channeller of women's interior lives. . . . This book is a raging, funny and fierce thriller with a protagonist whose life force, against extraordinary odds-always in the gaze and sometimes the grasp of predatory, abusive men-is a thing of wonder."
-Isabel Berwick, Financial Times
"With skill and insight, Taddeo examines how the savagery of men fuels female rage. The result is as intimate as it is explosive."
-People (Book of the Week)
"Like if Joan Didion got into hard drugs and carried a switchblade everywhere."
-Keely Weiss, Harper's Bazaar
"[A] propulsive, fiercely confident debut novel . . . Joan's voice is so sharp and magnetic that the reader will follow her anywhere. . . . Taddeo's prose glitters. She has a gift for aphorism, the observation that astonishes."
-Jennifer Haigh, The New York Times Book Review
"Intoxicating . . . It's impossible to talk about Animal without talking about 2019's Three Women. That book, which follows the sexual and emotional lives of women, became the kind of cultural phenomenon that will forever follow Lisa Taddeo. Animal flows out of its predecessor, but where Women deals with the perils of heteronormative gender politics, Animal deals in the ways the system pushes women to the brink; and where Women is in conversation with #MeToo, Animal is in conversation with the anger that follows the reckoning."
-Entertainment Weekly
"Animal is a viscerally satisfying depiction of female rage and a gripping exploration of what it's like to endure male violence that is both mundane and life-altering."
-New York magazine
"Astonishing . . .The writing is so engaging on the sentence level that when you sink into the larger argument the Taddeo is making you can't help but feel something akin to awe. Read this one."
-Lisa Levy, CrimeReads
"Animal growls a feral truth, a promise of revenge, and an untold story of rage, and a reckoning."
-Julia Hass, Lithub
"Riveting . . . Propulsive, erotic, emotional . . . Joan is almost impossible to look away from on every page."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Taddeo creates impressive suspense. . . . A provocative novel of sex, love, and rage for readers drawn to psychologically rich, feminist literary fiction."
-Booklist
"A brilliant if uncomfortable provocation, sometimes messily intense but willing to take risks; likely to stir talk-and argument. . . . For readers, the result is relentless but never wearing, not preachment but real lived pain, and akin to standing in a hurricane with razor blades flying. There's blood at the end-and a glimmer of self-affirmation."
-Library Journal
"Fearless, sexy, brutal, and just forensically observed."
-Jojo Moyes, author of The Giver of Stars
"Animal is sprawling id, a carnal and frank account of the uneasy marriage of memory and violence."
-Raven Leilani, author of Luster
PRAISE FOR LISA TADDEO AND THREE WOMEN:
"A breathtaking and important book . . . What a fine thing it is to be enthralled by another writer's sentences. To be stunned by her intellect and heart."
-Cheryl Strayed
"I can't remember the last time a book affected me as profoundly as Three Women. Lisa Taddeo is a tireless reporter, a brilliant writer, and a storyteller possessed of almost supernatural humanity. As far as I'm concerned, this is a nonfiction literary masterpiece at the same level as In Cold Blood-and just as suspenseful, bone-chilling, and harrowing, in its own way. I know already that I will never stop thinking about the women profiled in this story-about their sexual desire, their emotional pain, their strength, their losses. I saw myself in all of them. Truly, Three Women is an extraordinary offering."
-Elizabeth Gilbert
"An astonishing work of literary reportage . . . As Lisa Taddeo writes about her subjects, the women she uses to map out an anthropological, humane, passionate study of female desire, she seems almost to inhabit them. . . . A fascinating appraisal of a subject few writers have approached so intently."
-Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic
"The hottest book of the summer . . . Taddeo spent eight years reporting this groundbreaking book, moving across the country and back again in her staggeringly intimate foray into the sexual lives and desires of three 'ordinary' women. Tragedy and despair lurk in each of their stories, but Taddeo's dynamic writing brings them all to breathtaking life."
-Entertainment Weekly
"Taddeo spent a decade immersed in the sex lives of three ordinary American woman. . . . The result is the most in-depth look at the female sex drive and all its accompanying social, emotional, reproductive, and anthropological implications that's been published in decades. But it's also fully immersive: gonzo journalism without the machismo."
-New York
"A dazzling achievement . . . Three Women burns a flare-bright path through the dark woods of women's sexuality. In sentences that are as sharp-and bludgeoning, at times-as an ax, she retains the accuracy and integrity of nonfiction but risks the lyrical depths of prose and poetry."
-Margaret Wappler, Los Angeles Times
"A revolutionary look at women's desire, this feat of journalism reveals three women who are carnal, brave, and beautifully flawed."
-People (Book of the Week)
"An extraordinary study of female desire . . . To write this kind of nonfiction-it's true, but reads like a novel-Taddeo smartly employs not only interviews but also diary entries, legal documents, letters, emails and text messages. The result is a book as exhaustively reported and as elegantly written as Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers or Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family. . . . Taddeo's language is at its best-sublime, even-when she describes the pain of desire left unfulfilled."
-Elizabeth Flock, The Washington Post
"Three Women reads like a nonfiction novel in the deeply embedded, richly detailed vein of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood or Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. . . . It's Taddeo's deep, almost feverish commitment to detail and context that elevates the stories, making them feel not just painfully real but revelatory. In her efforts to explore 'the nuances of desire that hold the truth of who we are at our rawest moments,' she actually does much more: By peeling back the layers with such clear-eyed compassion, Taddeo illuminates the essential, elemental mystery of what it is to be a woman in the world."
-Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly
"Three Women is a battle cry. . . . Taddeo never judges. She doesn't slip into pseudopsychological frameworks for sex. She inhabits her subjects. And if you think her topic sounds a little louche, or isn't quite your thing, the true magic of this book may lie less in the subject matter and more in the style. . . . It's the literary brilliance of the book that will knock you back-how she channels these women's voices through her own. . . . For anyone who thinks they know what women want, this book is an alarm, and its volume is turned all the way up."
-Lea Carpenter, Time
"Searing . . . The stories of Taddeo's subjects, Sloane, Lina and Maggie, all feature the illicit-threesomes, dominance and submission, underage sex-and each includes a hefty dose of good old-fashioned adultery. . . . The result is effective and affecting. . . . Taddeo reveals an avalanche of evidence, as if we needed more, that the cozy comforts of marriage and its defining, confining attribute, monogamy, provide the perfect petri dish for combustible sex-with someone other than your spouse."
-New York Times Book Review
"If it is not the best book about women and desire that has ever been written, then it is certainly the best book about the subject that I have ever come across. When I picked it up, I felt I'd been waiting half my life to read it; when I put it down, it was as though I had been disemboweled. . . . There isn't a woman alive who won't recognize-her stomach lurching, her heart beating wildly-something of what Maggie, Lina, and Sloane go through."
-Rachel Cooke, The Guardian
"A heartbreaking, gripping, astonishing masterpiece, Three Women is destined to join the canon both of journalistic excellence and feminist literature."
-Esquire
-Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire
"A propulsive literary thriller . . . Taddeo's debut novel is fearless."
-Los Angeles Times
"Animal will confirm Taddeo's status as a pre-eminent channeller of women's interior lives. . . . This book is a raging, funny and fierce thriller with a protagonist whose life force, against extraordinary odds-always in the gaze and sometimes the grasp of predatory, abusive men-is a thing of wonder."
-Isabel Berwick, Financial Times
"With skill and insight, Taddeo examines how the savagery of men fuels female rage. The result is as intimate as it is explosive."
-People (Book of the Week)
"Like if Joan Didion got into hard drugs and carried a switchblade everywhere."
-Keely Weiss, Harper's Bazaar
"[A] propulsive, fiercely confident debut novel . . . Joan's voice is so sharp and magnetic that the reader will follow her anywhere. . . . Taddeo's prose glitters. She has a gift for aphorism, the observation that astonishes."
-Jennifer Haigh, The New York Times Book Review
"Intoxicating . . . It's impossible to talk about Animal without talking about 2019's Three Women. That book, which follows the sexual and emotional lives of women, became the kind of cultural phenomenon that will forever follow Lisa Taddeo. Animal flows out of its predecessor, but where Women deals with the perils of heteronormative gender politics, Animal deals in the ways the system pushes women to the brink; and where Women is in conversation with #MeToo, Animal is in conversation with the anger that follows the reckoning."
-Entertainment Weekly
"Animal is a viscerally satisfying depiction of female rage and a gripping exploration of what it's like to endure male violence that is both mundane and life-altering."
-New York magazine
"Astonishing . . .The writing is so engaging on the sentence level that when you sink into the larger argument the Taddeo is making you can't help but feel something akin to awe. Read this one."
-Lisa Levy, CrimeReads
"Animal growls a feral truth, a promise of revenge, and an untold story of rage, and a reckoning."
-Julia Hass, Lithub
"Riveting . . . Propulsive, erotic, emotional . . . Joan is almost impossible to look away from on every page."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Taddeo creates impressive suspense. . . . A provocative novel of sex, love, and rage for readers drawn to psychologically rich, feminist literary fiction."
-Booklist
"A brilliant if uncomfortable provocation, sometimes messily intense but willing to take risks; likely to stir talk-and argument. . . . For readers, the result is relentless but never wearing, not preachment but real lived pain, and akin to standing in a hurricane with razor blades flying. There's blood at the end-and a glimmer of self-affirmation."
-Library Journal
"Fearless, sexy, brutal, and just forensically observed."
-Jojo Moyes, author of The Giver of Stars
"Animal is sprawling id, a carnal and frank account of the uneasy marriage of memory and violence."
-Raven Leilani, author of Luster
PRAISE FOR LISA TADDEO AND THREE WOMEN:
"A breathtaking and important book . . . What a fine thing it is to be enthralled by another writer's sentences. To be stunned by her intellect and heart."
-Cheryl Strayed
"I can't remember the last time a book affected me as profoundly as Three Women. Lisa Taddeo is a tireless reporter, a brilliant writer, and a storyteller possessed of almost supernatural humanity. As far as I'm concerned, this is a nonfiction literary masterpiece at the same level as In Cold Blood-and just as suspenseful, bone-chilling, and harrowing, in its own way. I know already that I will never stop thinking about the women profiled in this story-about their sexual desire, their emotional pain, their strength, their losses. I saw myself in all of them. Truly, Three Women is an extraordinary offering."
-Elizabeth Gilbert
"An astonishing work of literary reportage . . . As Lisa Taddeo writes about her subjects, the women she uses to map out an anthropological, humane, passionate study of female desire, she seems almost to inhabit them. . . . A fascinating appraisal of a subject few writers have approached so intently."
-Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic
"The hottest book of the summer . . . Taddeo spent eight years reporting this groundbreaking book, moving across the country and back again in her staggeringly intimate foray into the sexual lives and desires of three 'ordinary' women. Tragedy and despair lurk in each of their stories, but Taddeo's dynamic writing brings them all to breathtaking life."
-Entertainment Weekly
"Taddeo spent a decade immersed in the sex lives of three ordinary American woman. . . . The result is the most in-depth look at the female sex drive and all its accompanying social, emotional, reproductive, and anthropological implications that's been published in decades. But it's also fully immersive: gonzo journalism without the machismo."
-New York
"A dazzling achievement . . . Three Women burns a flare-bright path through the dark woods of women's sexuality. In sentences that are as sharp-and bludgeoning, at times-as an ax, she retains the accuracy and integrity of nonfiction but risks the lyrical depths of prose and poetry."
-Margaret Wappler, Los Angeles Times
"A revolutionary look at women's desire, this feat of journalism reveals three women who are carnal, brave, and beautifully flawed."
-People (Book of the Week)
"An extraordinary study of female desire . . . To write this kind of nonfiction-it's true, but reads like a novel-Taddeo smartly employs not only interviews but also diary entries, legal documents, letters, emails and text messages. The result is a book as exhaustively reported and as elegantly written as Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers or Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family. . . . Taddeo's language is at its best-sublime, even-when she describes the pain of desire left unfulfilled."
-Elizabeth Flock, The Washington Post
"Three Women reads like a nonfiction novel in the deeply embedded, richly detailed vein of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood or Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. . . . It's Taddeo's deep, almost feverish commitment to detail and context that elevates the stories, making them feel not just painfully real but revelatory. In her efforts to explore 'the nuances of desire that hold the truth of who we are at our rawest moments,' she actually does much more: By peeling back the layers with such clear-eyed compassion, Taddeo illuminates the essential, elemental mystery of what it is to be a woman in the world."
-Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly
"Three Women is a battle cry. . . . Taddeo never judges. She doesn't slip into pseudopsychological frameworks for sex. She inhabits her subjects. And if you think her topic sounds a little louche, or isn't quite your thing, the true magic of this book may lie less in the subject matter and more in the style. . . . It's the literary brilliance of the book that will knock you back-how she channels these women's voices through her own. . . . For anyone who thinks they know what women want, this book is an alarm, and its volume is turned all the way up."
-Lea Carpenter, Time
"Searing . . . The stories of Taddeo's subjects, Sloane, Lina and Maggie, all feature the illicit-threesomes, dominance and submission, underage sex-and each includes a hefty dose of good old-fashioned adultery. . . . The result is effective and affecting. . . . Taddeo reveals an avalanche of evidence, as if we needed more, that the cozy comforts of marriage and its defining, confining attribute, monogamy, provide the perfect petri dish for combustible sex-with someone other than your spouse."
-New York Times Book Review
"If it is not the best book about women and desire that has ever been written, then it is certainly the best book about the subject that I have ever come across. When I picked it up, I felt I'd been waiting half my life to read it; when I put it down, it was as though I had been disemboweled. . . . There isn't a woman alive who won't recognize-her stomach lurching, her heart beating wildly-something of what Maggie, Lina, and Sloane go through."
-Rachel Cooke, The Guardian
"A heartbreaking, gripping, astonishing masterpiece, Three Women is destined to join the canon both of journalistic excellence and feminist literature."
-Esquire