Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

There has been a lot of buzz about this book and for good reason.  For some reason, I thought that it was a work of fiction, but to my (pleasant!) surprise, it is a work of non-fiction focused on the sex lives of three very different women from different parts of the United States.  Lisa Taddeo even says that she struggled to find these women - she drove across the country six times! It takes place in the current decade. The women are different from each other - Maggie (in her 20's and working class), Sloane (upper class, lives in Newport RI and owns a business), and Lina (in her 30's and living in Indiana). Lina has rekindled a relationship with a (married) high school sweetheart after her marriage has ended.  Maggie is suffering from the fallout of a relationship with a married teacher that she had when she was in high school, including a trial and earning the hatred of a divided community. Sloane and her husband are middle aged swingers that own a restaurant in Newport. The common thread seems to be that the women are struggling to be sexual, to be desired and not to be hated.  They don't seem to have their own sexual agency and all three seem to be punished without experiencing the pleasure that they want.

I found all of the women's stories compelling - Maggie's in particular was heart wrenching.  She, by her own account, was an at risk teenager with parents who were alcoholics.  She confided in her teacher who then began to groom her and begin an inappropriate relationship with her. Maggie's story and the trial were all too real to me - it happens everyday in our criminal justice system where women like Maggie have suffered and then aren't vindicated by a guilty verdict. And she still suffers the ramifications - she drops out of college and is working a dead end job as a food service worker. She also suffers extreme depression and anxiety.

I think I was perhaps  most interested in Sloane's story because it's not something that I would ever choose for myself. Sloane and her husband were always open about their sexual lives and Sloane and he seemed to participate in this lifestyle healthily with open communication. The crux of Sloane's story was that a partner to their bed wasn't as open with his own partner (with whom he was in a long term relationship and had children) as Sloane and her husband had been led to believe. When the partner's wife finds out, the blame falls squarely on Sloane as the woman in the relationship, even though Sloane's husband was the one that encouraged her to engage in the liason.

I generally really enjoyed this book. It was a quick and interesting read, although it generally left me pessimistic about women having any degree of sexual agency that doesn't carry some blowback or punishment or shaming.  Highly recommended.