Jealousy: The Other Life of Catherine M. - Softcover

Millet, Catherine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802145191 ISBN 13: 9780802145192

Publisher: Grove Press, 2011

Synopsis

Catherine Millet's best-selling The Sexual Life of Catherine M. was a landmark book -- a portrait of a sexual life lived without boundaries and without a safety net. Described as "eloquent, graphic -- and sometimes even poignant" by Newsweek, and as "[perhaps] one of the most erotic books ever written" by Playboy, it drew international attention for its audacity, and the apparently superhuman sangfroid required of Millet and her partner, Jacques Henric, with whom she had an extremely public and active open relationship. Now, Millet's follow-up answers the first book's implicit question: How did you avoid jealousy? "I had love at home," Millet explains, "I sought only pleasure in the world outside." But one day she discovered a letter in their apartment that made it clear that Jacques was seriously involved with someone else. Jealousy details the crisis provoked by this discovery, and Millet's attempts to reconcile her need for freedom and sexual liberation with the very real heartache that Jacques's infidelity caused. If The Sexual Life of Catherine M. seemed to disregard emotion, Jealousy is its radical complement: the paradoxical confession of a libertine who discovers that love, in any of its forms, can have a dark side.

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Review

Written in a very beautiful style, which is clear elegant and subtle, thus reminding us sometimes of Les Liaisons Dangereuses and of the salon writers in the 18th century , Jealousy explores a universal and timeless disease in a very particular way (Le Nouvel Observateur)

Seldom has any writer since Proust written in such a fine, profound and clever way on jealousy (Les Inrockuptibles)

Jealousy is a painful, stifling, deeply moving love story. It is not the dark counterpart of The Sexual Life but rather its continuation. With a flamboyant crudeness, a cold cruelty (aimed at herself), with astounding lucidity, Catherine Millet describes this loss of self-balance and the crushing of the body thrust against the walls (Le Monde)

Her style, always extremely accurate, explores like an archaeologist the layers of anguish and pain, of consciousness and the unconscious, struggling in order to understand the unbearable feeling of being jealous (Têtu)

It is like a conceptual work of art: if the first book was the performance, then the second one is its commentary (Libération)

Jealousy is remarkable. For its distance, its modesty, its style (Lire)

a dense, searching and often elegantly written meditation on jealousy; a painstaking audit of Millet's motivations and behaviour at a time of trauma. (Weekend Australian 2009-10-24)

For anyone interested in the workings of the human heart, this is an essential text (Jane Shilling Evening Standard 2009-10-15)

Its spellbindingly fluid prose makes this an absorbing tale. (Yasmin Sulaiman The List 2009-10-22)

An honest, brutal piece of confession and self analysis that's also more than a little racy in parts... fascinating

(Viv Groskop The Observer 2009-11-01)

Book Description

From the author of the huge bestseller The Sexual Life of Catherine M.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0802145191
• ISBN 13: 9780802145192
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192