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9781451642292

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I literally could not put it down. An unflinching dissection of female desire so poetically described, I forgot it was nonfiction. Lisa Taddeo makes a gorgeous, unabashed debut. Wow. --Gwyneth Paltrow on Instagram This book--challenging and heartbreaking--will stay with me. An extraordinary, documentary deep dive into the psychology of women and sex and the stories we tell ourselves. Three Women is as unputdownable as the most page-turning fiction. --Jojo Moyes, author of Me Before You Three Women offers a fascinating excavation of the intricacies of love and desire, where they conspire and where they conflict. Read this book. You will forever rethink the erotics of women. --Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity Three Women is painstaking, painful, unblinking, unsentimental, and utterly unapologetic. Lisa Taddeo comes scarily close to proving the truth of a line uttered by a character in an Antonya Nelson story: 'Love is sadness.' --David Shields, author of The Trouble With Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power Three Women is the new required reading for women and any person who wants to know them. Taddeo has given these women's testimonies of desire, love, and trauma a brilliance and dignity that is nothing short of revolutionary. --Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter I can't remember the last time a book affected me as profoundly as Three Women. Lisa Taddeo is a tireless reporter, a brilliant writer, and a storyteller possessed of almost supernatural humanity. As far as I'm concerned, this is a nonfiction literary masterpiece at the same level as In Cold Blood--and just as suspenseful, bone-chilling, and harrowing, in its own way. I know already that I will never stop thinking about the women profiled in this story--about their sexual desire, their emotional pain, their strength, their losses. I saw myself in all of them. Truly, Three Women is an extraordinary offering. --Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls [An] instant feminist classic . . . In this utterly engrossing, frankly game-changing work of narrative nonfiction, a New York magazine contributor profiles a trio of everyday women, shining a light on their darkest desires and how men (and other women) often thwart those wants. --Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine It's been years since I've read a book as propulsive, engrossing, mind-bending, and required as Lisa Taddeo's Three Women. On the surface, it's an account of how desire organizes, disrupts, and sometimes threatens to destroy the lives of its three heroines--and that, it seems, is the only way they'd have it. In this age of social media, when the most superficial forms of connection and engagement are touted as their opposites, Three Women reads like an antidote for our technologically-driven isolation and loneliness. It is the deepest dive into our neighbors' consciousnesses that I've ever read, so immersive it approaches the Tolstoyan, and its narcotic pleasures mainline the only thing that can truly save us: empathy. --Adam Ross, author of Mr. Peanut This is one of the most riveting, assured, and scorchingly original debuts I've ever read. Taddeo's beautifully written and unflinching portraits of desire allow her protagonists to be wholly human and wholly, blessedly complex. I can't imagine a scenario where this isn't one of the more important--and breathlessly debated--books of the year. --Dave Eggers, author of The Monk of Mokha

This is one of the most riveting, assured, and scorchingly original debuts I've ever read. Taddeo's beautifully written and unflinching portraits of desire allow her protagonists to be wholly human and wholly, blessedly complex. I can't imagine a scenario where this isn't one of the more important--and breathlessly debated--books of the year. --Dave Eggers

Three Women is the new required reading for women and any person who wants to know them. Taddeo has given these women's testimonies of desire, love, and trauma a brilliance and dignity that is nothing short of revolutionary. --Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter I can't remember the last time a book affected me as profoundly as Three Women. Lisa Taddeo is a tireless reporter, a brilliant writer, and a storyteller possessed of almost supernatural humanity. As far as I'm concerned, this is a nonfiction literary masterpiece at the same level as In Cold Blood--and just as suspenseful, bone-chilling, and harrowing, in its own way. I know already that I will never stop thinking about the women profiled in this story--about their sexual desire, their emotional pain, their strength, their losses. I saw myself in all of them. Truly, Three Women is an extraordinary offering. --Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls [An] instant feminist classic . . . In this utterly engrossing, frankly game-changing work of narrative nonfiction, a New York magazine contributor profiles a trio of everyday women, shining a light on their darkest desires and how men (and other women) often thwart those wants. --Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine It's been years since I've read a book as propulsive, engrossing, mind-bending, and required as Lisa Taddeo's Three Women. On the surface, it's an account of how desire organizes, disrupts, and sometimes threatens to destroy the lives of its three heroines--and that, it seems, is the only way they'd have it. In this age of social media, when the most superficial forms of connection and engagement are touted as their opposites, Three Women reads like an antidote for our technologically-driven isolation and loneliness. It is the deepest dive into our neighbors' consciousnesses that I've ever read, so immersive it approaches the Tolstoyan, and its narcotic pleasures mainline the only thing that can truly save us: empathy. --Adam Ross, author of Mr. Peanut This is one of the most riveting, assured, and scorchingly original debuts I've ever read. Taddeo's beautifully written and unflinching portraits of desire allow her protagonists to be wholly human and wholly, blessedly complex. I can't imagine a scenario where this isn't one of the more important--and breathlessly debated--books of the year. --Dave Eggers, author of The Monk of Mokha

I can't remember the last time a book affected me as profoundly as Three Women. Lisa Taddeo is a tireless reporter, a brilliant writer, and a storyteller possessed of almost supernatural humanity. As far as I'm concerned, this is a nonfiction literary masterpiece at the same level as In Cold Blood--and just as suspenseful, bone-chilling, and harrowing, in its own way. I know already that I will never stop thinking about the women profiled in this story--about their sexual desire, their emotional pain, their strength, their losses. I saw myself in all of them. Truly, Three Women is an extraordinary offering. --Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls Taddeo spent a decade immersed in the sex lives of three ordinary American woman. . . . The result is the most in-depth look at the female sex drive and all its accompanying social, emotional, reproductive, and anthropological implications that's been published in decades. But it's also fully immersive: gonzo journalism without the machismo. --New York [An] instant feminist classic . . . In this utterly engrossing, frankly game-changing work of narrative nonfiction, a New York magazine contributor profiles a trio of everyday women, shining a light on their darkest desires and how men (and other women) often thwart those wants. --Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine A riveting page-turner that explores desire, heartbreak, and infatuation in all its messy, complicated nuance. --The Washington Post This nonfiction look at the sex lives of three American women will be whispered about around pools from coast to coast. --Town & Country A heartbreaking, gripping, astonishing masterpiece, Three Women is destined to join the canon both of journalistic excellence and feminist literature. --Esquire This is one of the most riveting, assured, and scorchingly original debuts I've ever read. Taddeo's beautifully written and unflinching portraits of desire allow her protagonists to be wholly human and wholly, blessedly complex. I can't imagine a scenario where this isn't one of the more important--and breathlessly debated--books of the year. --Dave Eggers, author of The Monk of Mokha Three Women offers a fascinating excavation of the intricacies of love and desire, where they conspire and where they conflict. Read this book. You will forever rethink the erotics of women. --Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity I literally could not put it down. An unflinching dissection of female desire so poetically described, I forgot it was nonfiction. Lisa Taddeo makes a gorgeous, unabashed debut. Wow. --Gwyneth Paltrow on Instagram Taddeo braids together the women's narratives, which adds both suspense and heft as their desire-biographies echo and diverge. Her distinct proximity to her subjects shows in the intimate fantasies, scorching encounters, and profound pains they relate through her, but, the power resting fully with them, this never becomes voyeuristic. Instead, she allows them to be defined not by their jobs, kids, or, significantly, the men in their lives, but by a deep and essential part of themselves. Readers will almost certainly fly through this, and want to talk about it. --Booklist (starred review) This is an unusual, startling, and gripping debut. It feels to me like the kind of bold, timely, once-in-a-generation book that every house should have a copy of, and probably will before too long. --Megan Nolan, The New Statesman Three Women is the new required reading for women and any person who wants to know them. Taddeo has given these women's testimonies of desire, love, and trauma a brilliance and dignity that is nothing short of revolutionary. --Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter A master class in empathy, Lisa Taddeo's revelatory work of narrative nonfiction is already shaping up to be a feminist touchstone for years to come. . . . At once epic and intimate, Three Women is an essential exploration of female desire and its consequences in a patriarchal society. --Harper's Bazaar Taddeo spent eight years studying the emotional landscape of three women as it related to their love and sex lives. What results is a book more engrossing than any soap--a book that pays deep and solemn attention to the link between a woman's body and heart, and her sense of self. --Refinery29 This book--challenging and heartbreaking--will stay with me. An extraordinary, documentary deep dive into the psychology of women and sex and the stories we tell ourselves. Three Women is as unputdownable as the most page-turning fiction. --Jojo Moyes, author of Me Before You Three Women is the honest portrayal of female desire that 2019 demands. --Marie Claire Three Women is my favorite kind of non-fiction: absorbing, narratively compelling, and replete with portrayals of complete humans. Lisa Taddeo spent eight years with the three women whose stories she tells here, and the resulting portrait of their sex lives is completely riveting. --Jessie Gaynor, Lit Hub It's been years since I've read a book as propulsive, engrossing, mind-bending, and required as Lisa Taddeo's Three Women. On the surface, it's an account of how desire organizes, disrupts, and sometimes threatens to destroy the lives of its three heroines--and that, it seems, is the only way they'd have it. In this age of social media, when the most superficial forms of connection and engagement are touted as their opposites, Three Women reads like an antidote for our technologically-driven isolation and loneliness. It is the deepest dive into our neighbors' consciousnesses that I've ever read, so immersive it approaches the Tolstoyan, and its narcotic pleasures mainline the only thing that can truly save us: empathy. --Adam Ross, author of Mr. Peanut Three Women is painstaking, painful, unblinking, unsentimental, and utterly unapologetic. Lisa Taddeo comes scarily close to proving the truth of a line uttered by a character in an Antonya Nelson story: 'Love is sadness.' --David Shields, author of The Trouble With Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power If you guzzled all of Esther Perel's couples counselling podcast or wonder whether those [New York magazine] sex diaries can possibly be real, here's your summer read. Lisa Taddeo draws on eight years of research to render three portraits of real women and their experiences of desire, coupling, and relationships. --Elle, The 30 Best Books to Read This Summer Taddeo takes readers inside the lives of three women whose lives were profoundly influenced by choices they made regarding sexuality. Written in beautiful prose, Taddeo's take makes the nonfiction stories come alive in a collection you won't be able to put down. --Newsweek Dexterous and suspenseful . . . The stories of Maggie, Lina, and Sloane are offered here without judgment, which allows readers to objectively view their multivalent experiences. With Three Women, a heavyweight and a knockout both, Taddeo makes it possible for each woman to be the agent of her own storytelling. --Shelf Awareness Dramatic, immersive . . . Based on eight years of reporting and thousands of hours of interaction, a journalist chronicles the inner worlds of three women's erotic desires. . . . Instead of sensationalizing, the author illuminates Maggie's, Lina's, and Sloane's erotic experiences in the context of their human complexities and personal histories, revealing deeper wounds and emotional yearnings. --Kirkus Reviews

I can't remember the last time a book affected me as profoundly as Three Women. Lisa Taddeo is a tireless reporter, a brilliant writer, and a storyteller possessed of almost supernatural humanity. As far as I'm concerned, this is a nonfiction literary masterpiece at the same level as In Cold Blood--and just as suspenseful, bone-chilling, and harrowing, in its own way. I know already that I will never stop thinking about the women profiled in this story--about their sexual desire, their emotional pain, their strength, their losses. I saw myself in all of them. Truly, Three Women is an extraordinary offering. --Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls [An] instant feminist classic . . . In this utterly engrossing, frankly game-changing work of narrative nonfiction, a New York magazine contributor profiles a trio of everyday women, shining a light on their darkest desires and how men (and other women) often thwart those wants. --Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine It's been years since I've read a book as propulsive, engrossing, mind-bending, and required as Lisa Taddeo's Three Women. On the surface, it's an account of how desire organizes, disrupts, and sometimes threatens to destroy the lives of its three heroines--and that, it seems, is the only way they'd have it. In this age of social media, when the most superficial forms of connection and engagement are touted as their opposites, Three Women reads like an antidote for our technologically-driven isolation and loneliness. It is the deepest dive into our neighbors' consciousnesses that I've ever read, so immersive it approaches the Tolstoyan, and its narcotic pleasures mainline the only thing that can truly save us: empathy. --Adam Ross, author of Mr. Peanut This is one of the most riveting, assured, and scorchingly original debuts I've ever read. Taddeo's beautifully written and unflinching portraits of desire allow her protagonists to be wholly human and wholly, blessedly complex. I can't imagine a scenario where this isn't one of the more important--and breathlessly debated--books of the year. --Dave Eggers, author of The Monk of Mokha

It's been years since I've read a book as propulsive, engrossing, mind-bending, and required as Lisa Taddeo's Three Women. On the surface, it's an account of how desire organizes, disrupts, and sometimes threatens to destroy the lives of its three heroines--and that, it seems, is the only way they'd have it. In this age of social media, when the most superficial forms of connection and engagement are touted as their opposites, Three Women reads like an antidote for our technologically-driven isolation and loneliness. It is the deepest dive into our neighbors' consciousnesses that I've ever read, so immersive it approaches the Tolstoyan, and its narcotic pleasures mainline the only thing that can truly save us: empathy. --Adam Ross, author of Mr. Peanut This is one of the most riveting, assured, and scorchingly original debuts I've ever read. Taddeo's beautifully written and unflinching portraits of desire allow her protagonists to be wholly human and wholly, blessedly complex. I can't imagine a scenario where this isn't one of the more important--and breathlessly debated--books of the year. --Dave Eggers, author of The Monk of Mokha

Author Information

Lisa Taddeo is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Three Women, which she adapted as a dramatic series on Starz, the novel Animal, and the short story collection Ghost Lover. She has contributed to The New York Times, New York magazine, Esquire, Elle, Glamour, and many other publications. Her nonfiction has been included in the Best American Sports Writing and Best American Political Writing anthologies, and her short stories have won two Pushcart Prizes. She lives with her husband and daughter in New England.

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