Reviews
" 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, " 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 "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, "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, "Taddeo spent a full 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 magazine "A riveting page-turner that explores desire, heartbreak, and infatuation in all its messy, complicated nuance." -- The Washington Post "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, " 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, "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, "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, "I've read a couple of extraordinary books lately. But I'm not sure any will stay with me as long as Three Women by Lisa Taddeo. A deep dive into the psychology of women and sex and the stories we tell ourselves." --Jojo Moyes, author of Me Before You , on Twitter, "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, "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, " 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
