The Sexual Life of Catherine M. [Hardcover]

Catherine Millet (Author), Adriana Hunter (Translator, Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2002

Called "a fantastic breakthrough into the dark content of female desire" (France-Soir), The Sexual Life of Catherine M. was the literary success of the year in France, selling over 300,000 copies and becoming the most controversial book on sexuality since The Story of O. Catherine Millet, the prominent editor of Art Press, has led an extraordinarily active and free sexual life -- from alfresco encounters in Italy to a gang bang on the edge of the Bois du Boulogne to a high-class orgy at a chichi Parisian restaurant. A graphic account of a life of physical gratification, the book is also a relentlessly honest look at the consequences of sex stripped of sentiment -- including the joys and sorrows of her open marriage -- and a completely fearless unmasking of the fallacies we cling to and the often shocking, sometimes disturbing truths of female sexuality. The French press was equally admiring and appalled by Millet's daring, but Le Nouvel Observateur certainly spoke for them all when it wrote, "Sex is this woman's continent, which she explores tirelessly. No one has ever described it like this." Now American audiences will have the opportunity to take home Catherine M. "This is the most explicit book about sex ever written by a woman." -- Edmund White "[Her] aloof, gracefully crystalline style is as elegant as any French pornography since Sade." -- Francine du Plessix Gray, Vogue "[A] stylistic tour de force recounting three decades of sexual exploits ... This book's pleasures are first and foremost literary." -- Saul Anton, Bookforum "[Millet] relates her sexual life without trembling, and allows us to share her pleasures." -- Daniel Bougnoux, Le Monde

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Millet, art critic and editor of Art Press, has become a literary sensation in France with the publication of this graphic memoir of some 30 years of her sexual adventures. Millet's "gift for observation" and her "solid superego" are as useful in her career as an art critic as they are in her erotic explorations: her ability to concentrate and observe puts her inside "other people's skins." Comparisons have been made to The Story Of O, but Millet is more in the tradition of Jean Genet and Violette Leduc, whose descriptions of their sexual encounters were not meant to titillate so much as to explore the meaning of the erotic. Millet's "quest for the sexual grail" takes her to group orgies, gang bangs in French parks and other serial sex escapades. Before long, the sex begins to seem utterly routine, in spite of the elaborate staging. Millet and her readers are then free to consider more closely some questions she raises: how oral sex compares to vaginal intercourse; why sex in disgusting circumstances is not about "self-abasement," but raising oneself "above all prejudice"; or why solitary sex is more pleasurable for her than sex with a partner. Toward the end of this curiously graceful memoir, Millet comes close to explaining her need for all this sex: only by sloughing off the "mechanical body" she'd been born with could she experience actual sexual pleasure. While women readers will find much of interest, male readers may have to overcome a certain emperor's new clothes-type discomfort, as they realize that Millet may know more about the male body than they do.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this steamy work, a best seller throughout Europe, the editor of France's Art Press shatters gender assumptions by detailing her rollicking sex life.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (May 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1852428112
• ISBN-13: 978-0802117168
• ASIN: 0802117163
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (73 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #893,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Memoir, If Read for the Right Reasons, July 18, 2002

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (Hardcover)

It is always fun to have an erotic work presented in a serious way and have it become popular. This was the case with Nicholson Baker's fictional _Vox_ some years back, and of course the short stories of Anaïs Nin. Good old Grove Press has been seriously printing erotic books for decades, and now has produced _The Sexual Life of Catherine M._ (note the ironic homage to _The Story of O_) by Catherine Millet. Millet is the editor of the Paris magazine _Art Press_, and has written several serious books on contemporary art. When her memoir was published in France last year, there were many intellectuals who were nfuriated that she was somehow trying to purge her sexual demons by publishing such a frank memoir about some extraordinary sexual adventures. In the US, her book won't infuriate intellectuals as much as it will infuriate the prudish and those who are offended by a woman of broad sexual appetite satisfying that appetite; but it also may well offend those who buy it thinking that every page will have words to inflame the passion and excite the imagination. This isn't a book for them.

Let us be clear: there is plenty of sex in the book. What Millet likes is men, lots of men, often in rapid sequence and simultaneously. Her lifelong hobby seems to have been orgies, swinging clubs, and being passed from one satisfied man to another. She describes plenty of episodes of men, more or less unknown to her, penetrating, licking, caressing; if this is disturbing, one only has to recall that she was enjoying it as were they, and that one has one's own sexual peccadilloes to nurture. The prose here is in translation (by Adriana Hunter), and so it is hard to tell how much to praise Millet for the words themselves, but in this edition they are vivid but also detached. She is not a seductress. She was simply available: "...this note that a friend put in a diary, which still gives me a glow of pride: 'Catherine, who deserves the highest praise for her calmness and availability in every situation.'" She writes often with sly wit; doing a particular stroke on a partner, "With my back bent and my frenetic arm movements, I must have looked very like a housewife desperately trying to stop a sauce from curdling, or someone proudly finishing up a home improvement." Her availability must have served her well: "I have never had to suffer any kind of clumsiness or brutality, and I have generally been lucky with the attentiveness of my partners."

Only fleeting parts of this book could serve as sexual stimulants. Millet has obviously enjoyed her sexual life, and has reflected intelligently on it in a non-euphemistic and frank way. Many of the activities described are exhausting, some depressing, but some are as exhilarating as exploring uncharted lands. To have achieved her status in her career, she must have skills in communicating and getting along with people in other than sexual ways, but little of that is on display here. She has had relations with hundreds of men, and can count only 49 whose faces she would recognize. There is no feminist harangue here, no claim of victory. She does not have the way most women would want to conduct themselves, nor is hers a model to which to aspire. But unapologetic, and lucid, her book gives a fascinating look at woman fulfilling her life in a unique way.

64 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars boring, repetitive, badly written, translated poorly, June 14, 2002

By 

Lover of Mysteries "avatar_of_ares" (Norridge, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (Hardcover)

Do yourself a favor, skip this mess. It's boring, repetitive, badly written, and translated poorly. Often the ramblings are just incoherent. There are inexplicably long paragraphs that start with one subject, switch to something unrelated, and end with yet another story.

If the eroticism is what interests you, skip this book: You will be disappointed. Amazon.com has a wide selection of much better erotica to select from or you can go to literotica.com to get stories from amateurs written a hundred times better than this mess.

36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Exceptionally Dull Sexual Life of Catherine M, December 6, 2003

By 

Martin Hulme (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (Paperback)

I read this entire book over the course of a transatlantic airline flight. From cover to cover, with interuptions in order to choose between "chicken or beef" and watch The Hulk two times running.

If I said I'd bought it to be titillated, I'd probably be missing the point. Which is a good job, really, because I found it about as erotic as an episode of Antiques Roadshow.

If I said I'd bought it for it's literary merits, and the enthusiastic praise on the back of the book, I'd be closer to the mark. The promised sex was just a bonus.

But, sadly, I was disappointed on both counts.

This is a book detailing, in explicit, but not remotely arousing detail, the prodigious sexual exploits of Catherine Millet. From the first time she had group sex, not long after she lost her virginity, to anonymous orgies in carparks in Bois de Boulogne, all of the details are written down in cold, clinical detail which makes them about as erotic as a pathology report.

Catherine M is thusly hailed as a pioneer, breaking apart gender stereotypes. She makes it very clear throughout the book that she's in the driving seat of her sexual life. Saying that, however, I really disagree with this idea.

One of the most obvious things one notices reading the book is the cold, clinical nature of Catherine's adventures. She really doesn't seem to gain any pleasure from any of these adventures. The results of her promiscuity, such as an STD and, later, an abortion, are described in throwaway detail as if they were as mundane an event as brushing her teeth.

I'm not sure if this is because of lacklustre translation (I wouldn't mind getting a copy of the original next time I'm in Paris)or simply because Catherine M is a cold, clinical woman. If that's the case, one has to ask why she'd go through all of these adventures if she appears to receive so little pleasure from them. She's not proud of her liberated sexuality, nor is she ashamed of it. Sex is described as something she submits herself to for no apparent reason. A real, liberated woman would surely be in charge of her sexuality for her own reasons of enjoyment and empowerment, instead of a sort of volontary submissive, as Catherine seems to be.

Or, perhaps, I am simply not getting the whole idea of the book. If so, please let me know!