“There are rapes, and then there are the rapes we allow to happen, the ones we shower and get ready for,” another woman tells her.Įven good sex with the one man she loves leaves Joan feeling ‘empty and shitty and stupid’Īfter Joan’s older, married lover shoots himself in front of her while she is having dinner with a new married lover – all of which is recounted in the opening paragraph – she takes herself on a pilgrimage to Los Angeles in search of a young woman named Alice, to whom she has a connection, though they have never met. At 36, she has a fierce sexual appetite, but she also regards sex as currency, an approach she learned at a young age from her aunt: “She taught me that men will use you unless you use them first.” Much of Joan’s inner monologue – and her dialogue – is concerned with the ambiguity she feels about her own desires, and her obsession with the constant power plays between men and women.

“I am depraved,” announces her narrator, Joan, with a mixture of pride and shame. Her first novel, Animal, explores the same territory. In each of her three case studies lurked the shadow of past or present abuse female desire, the book seemed to conclude, is inseparable from what has been done to us by men. L isa Taddeo’s bestselling debut, Three Women, made headlines as much for its process as its theme Taddeo spent eight years moving around the US, immersing herself in her subjects in pursuit of an intimate portrait of the sex lives of (straight, white) American women.

Lisa taddeo animal review