non-fiction. author followed three women for eight years to write about the role sex and desire played in their lives. Maggie was a high school student who had a relationship with a teacher and 5 years later went public and there was a trial. Lina is a middle aged married woman who has an affair with an old high school boyfriend. And Sloane is an upper class restaurant owner in an east coast resort town who has threesomes with her husband and other men.
this book was depressing to me. All three of these women have so many issues from their childhood which continue to play out in their warped and defective relationships with men: abuse, alcoholism, rape, daddy issues, anorexia/bulimia, etc. None of them were strong women who were advocating for themselves (what I thought the book might be). Instead they were all desperate to find love and someone who would be interested in them, esp Maggie and Lina. The men they were with in their adult lives were just using them (it seemed to me) and it was just sad to read about. Like the girls you knew in high school that threw themselves at boys and you wanted to yell at them and say "he's using you. just stop" Ugh. hated this book. The only interesting part was at the end of Sloane's story when she realizes the harm she has done to another woman by sleeping with that woman's husband and the woman says to her "you're the woman, you hold the power, you shouldn't have done this to another woman" Now, that woman got it! I would have liked to hear more of her story. And the ending - well, it just ended. We know Maggie is still depressed and still waitressing, but we know nothing of how things continue for Lina and Sloane. The book just abruptly ends.
this book was depressing to me. All three of these women have so many issues from their childhood which continue to play out in their warped and defective relationships with men: abuse, alcoholism, rape, daddy issues, anorexia/bulimia, etc. None of them were strong women who were advocating for themselves (what I thought the book might be). Instead they were all desperate to find love and someone who would be interested in them, esp Maggie and Lina. The men they were with in their adult lives were just using them (it seemed to me) and it was just sad to read about. Like the girls you knew in high school that threw themselves at boys and you wanted to yell at them and say "he's using you. just stop" Ugh. hated this book. The only interesting part was at the end of Sloane's story when she realizes the harm she has done to another woman by sleeping with that woman's husband and the woman says to her "you're the woman, you hold the power, you shouldn't have done this to another woman" Now, that woman got it! I would have liked to hear more of her story. And the ending - well, it just ended. We know Maggie is still depressed and still waitressing, but we know nothing of how things continue for Lina and Sloane. The book just abruptly ends.
I'm giving up on this one. Promoted as a "documentary", but written in the florid prose of romance novels, this case study of three women whose sexual traumas and dysfunctions are making shambles of their lives is just too squicky to finish.
