The Sexual Life of Catherine M. - Softcover

Millet, Catherine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852428112 ISBN 13: 9781852428112

Publisher: Serpents Tail, 2002

Synopsis

In an erotic memoir, the editor of Art Press describes her remarkably active and free sexual life as she honestly and graphically describes her world of physical gratification, the consequences of sex stripped of sentiment, and the fallacies of female sexuality.

About this title

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:

‘I thought it was the most honest book I had ever read on the subject of sex’ -- Rowan Pelling, The Daily Telegraph

‘Keeps crudeness at bay through an aloof, gracefully crystalline style as elegant as any French pornography since de Sade’ -- Vogue(USA)

‘Millet is a woman who writes plainly; who tells the truth about desire’ -- The Guardian

‘Millet writes extremely well, describing her recollections vividly, and investing her physical largesse with a queenly magnanimity’ -- Lisa Hilton, Times Literary Supplement

‘Millet’s achievement is that she curates or, more accurately, catalogues her sexual adventures with no sense of shame or remorse’ -- Deborah Levy, Independent

‘Readers may find this book disturbing or repellent, but they are unlikely to find it dull’ -- Rowan Pelling, Daily Telegraph

‘She proves again that Catholicism and filthy sex go together like salt beef and rye’ -- The Independent on Sunday

About this edition

• Publisher: Serpents Tail
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1852428112
• ISBN 13: 9781852428112
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 186