Product Description

Written in spare, elegant prose, "The Sexual Life of Catherine M." is the autobiography of a well-known Parisian art critic who likes to spend nights in the singles clubs of Paris and in the Bois de Boulogne where she has sex with a succession of anonymous men. Unlike many contemporary women writers, there is no guilt in Millet's narrative, no chronicles of use and abuse: on the contrary, she has no regrets about a life of sexual activity. Catherine Millet's writing is a subtle reflection on the boundaries of art and life and she uses her insights on the role of the body in modern art to set the scene for her multiple sexual encounters.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3205 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
A publishing sensation upon its original publication in France, Catherine Millet’s The Sexual Life of Catherine M is one of the most sexually explicit books ever written by a woman. Ostensibly a semi-autobiographical account of the sexual life of the author, the editor of an influential Parisian art magazine, the book is a frank and detailed account of Millet’s development from an awkward, guilt-ridden Catholic teenager to sophisticated Parisian intellectual and enthusiastic member of the singles bars, orgies and public sex spaces of Paris.

The book has no sequential narrative. Instead, it offers a frank and extremely graphic celebration of the pursuit and gratification of sex. Millet praises the virtues of anonymous sex, admitting that "I can account for forty-nine men whose sexual organs have penetrated mine and to whom I can attribute a name or, at least, in a few cases, an identity. But I cannot put a number on those that blur into anonymity". Nevertheless, she proceeds to offer page after page of exhausting descriptions of sexual couplings in groups in houses, car parks, offices, toilets, museums--the list and the permutations are endless, as are Millet’s descriptions of her own sexual organs and her ability to perform oral sex. Millet wants to celebrate the personal freedom and physical pleasure that casual, anonymous sex offers a woman, but this is never fully explored beyond her assertion that "the certainty that I could have sexual relations in any situation with any willing party" was "the lungfuls of fresh air you inhale as you walk to the end of the pier". Much of the book’s language is equally prosaic. Ultimately, this is a book about sexual fantasy, but as Millet herself admits, "sexual fantasies are far too personal for them ever really to be shared". Millet is too busy describing the literal nuts and bolts, the grunts and bumps of (resolutely heterosexual) sex to produce eroticism on a par with her obvious models, Pauline Reage’s Story of O and Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye, which leaves The Sexual Life of Catherine M feeling rather naughty, but strangely dated.--Jerry Brotton

Review
'One of the most explicit books about sex ever written by a woman' Edmund White

Daily Telegraph
‘I thought it was the most honest book I had ever read on the subject of sex’

Customer Reviews

More Carry On than Kama Sutra
Readers familiar with Fanny Hill by John Cleland may experience a sense of deja-vu on reading The Sexual Life of Catherine M. When not gracing the reader with intellectual insights on the relationship between space, sex and the natural environment, the author is variously being 'rammed' or 'filled' with a variety of 'members' 'rods' or 'organs'. The author herself is constantly 'taken' by 'insistent' men, and even ends up being pounced upon 'from behind' when she has a stomach upset - not the first thing which would occur to me to ease a case of Dehli belly.
For a memoir touted as a narrative of sexual liberation, I found this book not so much shocking as tedious, mundane, even flaccid. The descriptions of sexual liaisons are phallocentric and repetitive, and the tone is more prudish than provocative in its use of stock pornographic vocabularly. I'd recommend that readers stick to Anais Nin who writes with a truly female voice, and leaves out all the intellectual navel-gazing in which Catherine M indulges.

The Empty Life of Catherine M
It is said that to write a good memoir, you have to have lived an interesting life. Catherine Millet easily passed this test, unfortunately she dismally fails the second implicit requirement, an ability to write well.

The book portrays, in a seemingly random sequence, the author's uninhibited experiences of group sex; where no man, woman or sexual practise was taboo. Surprisingly, given the potential gold-mine of salacious stories, the resultant book managed to make orgies as exciting as going to the toilet. There rarely seems to be any attempt to provide anything more than the shallowest description of the mechanics. Ms Millet maintains that her sexual pursuits do not revolve about pleasure, something I find easy to believe as enjoyment, excitement and emotion of claringly missing from the book. Where she does occassionally discuss her pleasure, it just becomes another cold facet of intercourse; an orgasm without feeling.

I also suspect that Ms Millet is trying to provide some philosophical underpinning to her experiences; an attempt to provide some insight into how people relate. However, her style is so jumbled and opaque - with some of the most ridiculous metaphors - that it would be impossible to identify anything of value.

Overall, do not buy this book! The most jaded bodice-ripper would be a better buy than "The Sexual Life of Catherine M"; at least it would have some excitement.

The mechanical adventures of the Duracell bunny
An astonishingly dull, tedious and mechanistic book about a life spent in the pursuit of clockwork sex. This woman humps her way through dozens, possibly hundreds, of faceless men rather like the Duracell bunny - with considerably less excitement, pleasure and imagination than a trainspotter recording serial numbers from railway engines. All the characters including the author remain resolutely two-dimensional and bloodless throughout. A deadening book which summons up rather more vivid images of the psychiatrist's office than the bedroom.