Three Women (Taddeo) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
[A]n immersive look at a particular story of female sexuality, albeit refracted three ways. It's florid…but also bracing, bleak and full of nagging questions about why it remains so difficult for some women to access their secret lives, to name—let alone pursue—their desires.… The boldness in Three Women—and its missteps—are both born of the risks Taddeo takes; she is a writer who knows "there's nothing safer than wanting nothing.
Parul Sehgal - New York Times


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.
Toni Bentley - New York Times Book Review


Taddeo is stellar at embodying the women, taking on the voice of each in turn. It produces a feeling that the reader is sitting down over coffee to listen to the deeply personal and frequently painful stories of Maggie, Lina, and Sloane.…. With the disparate threads of these stories, Taddeo weaves complex connections between her subjects' desires.
Bryn Greenwood - Washington Post


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.… Taddeo’s language is at its best—sublime, even—when she describes the pain of desire left unfulfilled.
Elizabeth Flock - Washington Post


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.
Los Angeles Times


[The three women] are not unusual in their complicated sexual histories; what makes their stories revolutionary is the exquisite candor with which Taddeo gives them voice.…. Taddeo narrates [the storoes] with a magically light touch, inhabiting each so fully we feel as if we’re living alongside them. The book is sexually explicit… but it never feels gratuitous or clinical. Its prose is gorgeous, nearly lyrical as it describes the longings and frustrations that propel these ordinary women.
NPR


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.
Atlantic


Taddeo takes readers inside the lives of three women whose lives were profoundly influenced by choices they made regarding sexuality. Written in beautiful prose, Taddeo’s take makes the nonfiction stories come alive in a collection you won’t be able to put down.
Newsweek


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.
New York Magazine


A revolutionary look at women’s desire, this feat of journalism reveals three women who are carnal, brave, and beautifully flawed.
People


[A]mbitious, if flawed, debut…. Unfortunately, all three [women] feel underdeveloped, with no real insight into them or their lives outside of their sexual histories…. Taddeo’s immersive narrative is intense, but more voyeuristic than thoughtful.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) Taddeo braids together the women’s narratives, which adds both suspense and heft as their desire-biographies echo and diverge…. She allows them to be defined not by… the men in their lives, but by a deep and essential part of themselves.
Booklist


Dramatic, immersive…. Instead of sensationalizing, the author illuminates Maggie’s, Lina’s, and Sloane’s erotic experiences in the context of their human complexities and personal histories, revealing deeper wounds and emotional yearnings.
Kirkus Reviews