Boooring. What was supposed to be an erotic memoir just made me feel sorry for her. She obviously has problems. What was even worse was putting an erotic spin on a situation that was clearly molestation. Creepy.

Tedious. Un-erotic. I can only hope that it was just a bad translation.

Worth the read. It is erotic in a way you would read a newspaper article on sex might be, but that's not the intent. She purposefully takes a distanced view to try and create as factual of an account as possible. Glad I read it.

I quite enjoyed this book. I have to accept that this is a woman honestly expressing her joy of sex. It may not be representative of EVERY woman, but pardon my literary ignorance, but i have never read a female expression so explicit, compelling and seemingly honest. Millet doesn’t offer much by way of psychological motivation, but merely states she enjoys feeling the feeling of ecstasy and pure physical indulgence, in some ways this is like a junky memoir. The structure of the book is enjoyable, and Millet, being a quite experienced art critic, delivers a compelling final twist, unless I’m on drugs??

In the second series of the Book Group, a comedy set in Glasgow, this was one of the books they read, which it how I came to hear of it and thought I would read it. I started reading it when I was part way through The Scarlet Letter - maybe as an antidote to all that puritan moralising.

This is a curisoity of a book - more in your reaction to it than the book itself. This is Catherine Millet's memoirs, but exclusively on her sexual life, so you might end up thinking this is all she did with her life - hey, I don't know, maybe she did, but I think she did have a job etc as well. So it's about sex, her thoughts on the matter, all the various encounters she has had and so on. And she's done it all, including group sex with random strangers in a dark park, which you'd think would be really quite dangerous, but she seems to have not been fazed by any of it.

It does get boring at times, so I found parts of this book dragged, perhaps as much as the puritanical moralising that was going on in The Scarlet Letter. And sometimes she just felt so disconnected from life and from people, that she was going through life with no feeling or passion, just letting random men do whatever they felt like with her, and she really didn't care that she was treated as nothing more than a sexual doll. There was one encounter she describes when she goes to this restaurant near Casablanca with a friend that stuck in my mind. But she genuinely doesn't care, and this seems to be her driving force in life. She doesn't apologise for any of it, nor does she revel in it as though she is so superior and more emanicipated than the rest of us. She doesn't have tales of abuse of lists of excuses for why she does what she does. She doesn't view it as slutty, just as she doesn't seem to view someone who doesn't want to do these things as frigid. And I think that by the end there's the positive message that whatever you are, whatever you do or don't, it's ok (ok, so not including anything illegal, hurting other people etc, but you know what I mean.) And I liked the book for that, although I don't know if that was her intention in writing it.

shock value alone keeps you going

My complaint is maybe a little different from the others. She can be as sexual as she wants and with whomever she wants, I'm not shaming her for any of her behavior. The book is just boring. It's like a random mishmash of her memories. There isn't anything to really care about. I don't see her really caring about anyone else. That is what makes her unlikeable.

incredible recountings of a woman who has had more sexual encounters than most small liberal arts college students put together. Her ability to detach sexual acts from loving relationships is enthralling. You turn the page and literally are thinking, "what will happen next". Not to sound crass, but you end up asking yourself "is there anyone that she will NOT sleep with?" I wonder if it's a reflection of the differences that exist between the Americanized western ideal of loving, monogamous relationships and other european, non-secular countries.

I loved this book. Didn't know anything about Catherine or the book itself...actually rescued the book from a pile at an outdoor flea market for $1.

I thought the book itself was beautifully written in the most crude but poised way possible? If that makes any sense. It was like the crudeness of the writing hooked you but the delicate delivery and descriptions continued to keep you wanting more. As a woman, I felt every line was extremely relatable. At times I thought it was something I could have written. I loved the reflections and the realizations along the way. Great summertime lakeside read!