273August 2019 THE WEEKARTS“Every house should haveacopy” of
this book–“and probably will before
too long”, said Megan Nolan in the
New Statesman. Eight years in the
making, Lisa Taddeo’sThree Women
chronicles the sex lives of three
American women, all selected because
their stories struckachord. Maggie is a
waitress from North Dakota who bears the “dreadful
consequences of going public aboutateenage affair with her high
school teacher”. Lina isafrustrated Indiana housewife who
discovers sexual (if not emotional) fulfilment by reconnecting with
an old flame. And Sloane isa“glamorous” restaurateur whose
husband enjoys watching her have sex with others. Taddeo (above)
spentthousandsof hourswithher subjects,evenmovingtothe
towns where they live to gainadeeper understanding of their
lives. And it shows:Ihave never seen female sexuality articulated
“quite so plainly”.Three Womenis a“once-in-a-generation”
work:a“majestic assertion of the existence of women’s desire”.
This book is, in many ways,a“female corrective” toThy
Neighbour’s Wife,Gay Talese’s male-orientated account of 1970s
sexual liberation, said Emma Jacobs in
the Financial Times. Meticulously
reported and “deliciously graphic”, it is
rightly being hailed asafeminist classic.
Yet it is also, for the most part, a
dispiriting read. Taddeo’s subjects may
enjoy sex, but they are also imprisoned
by it. All internalise men’s views of
attractiveness and desire, and all suffer
the consequences of being sexual
beings. Indeed, rather than exposing the
“vast terra incognita of female desire”,
what this book reveals is women’s
ongoing “fragility and neediness”, said
Toni Bentley in The New York Times.
The conclusion it points to is far from
liberating: thatawoman “in love” is
“frequentlyabasket case”.
Taddeo thinks that her stories “convey vital truths” about
contemporary sexual mores, said Lucy Scholes in The Daily
Telegraph. I’m not sure that this is true. Her subjects are all white,
under 40 and predominantly straight. All are women “whose
outward compliance belies an unseen churning tumult within” –
which Taddeo admits was also the case with her own mother. Her
subjects, then, are hardly “universal”. Yet despite such misgivings,
IfoundThree Women“almost impossibly compelling”: it is like
Mills&Boon told with the “gravitas and momentum” ofagood
true crime story. “It shouldn’t work, and on certain levels it
doesn’t, yet all the same, it’s the book no oneIknow can put
down, and the one everyone is talking about.”Three Women
by Lisa Taddeo
Simon&Schuster 320pp £16.99
The Week Bookshop£13.99
Review of reviews: BooksBook of the weekMost English-language books about North Korea
have an “American bias”, said Andrei Lankov in
the Financial Times: their focus is less on North
Korea itself than on the “country’s impact on US
politics”.The Great Successoris awelcome
exception:astudy of North Korea’s Supreme
Leader, Kim Jong Un, it is unusual both in its
depth (Fifield, an American journalist, regularly
visits the country and has spoken to dozens of
North Koreans) and in being “fun to read”. The most revealing chapters are
about Kim’s childhood, said Rana Mitter in The Sunday Times. Having spent
his early years inaPyongyang compound (where, by the age of 11, he had been
givenareal car andaColt 45 pistol), Kim was despatched to school in
Switzerland. Schoolmates recallasullen misfit (“he kicked us in the shins and
even spat at us”) who was regularly teased because he woreatracksuit–the
standard casual clothing of North Korea’s elite. This upbringing did, however,
lead him to see himself asa“special figure to whom nothing could be denied”.
The sections dealing with Kim’s adulthood are equally “vivid”, said Julian
Borger in The Guardian. Upon assuming power, aged 28, in 2012, Kim
consolidated control by killing “many of the old party faithful”. He reportedly
hadatop general executed by anti-aircraft gun for the “crime” of nodding off
while he was speaking. Mixed with such gruesome deeds are more “comic”
interludes: Kim’s “deeply weird” friendship with the former basketball player
Dennis Rodman; details of his resort in the city of Wonsan, which is by all
accountsapersonal Disneyland. Elegantly written and exhaustively researched,
The Great Successoris atimely biography of the “chubby tyrant” whose
thoughts and deeds make an “enormous difference” to the world at large.
The Great Successor
by Anna Fifield
John Murray 336pp £20
The Week Bookshop£16.99
Novel of the weekFleishman Is in Trouble
by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Wildfire 373pp £18.99
The Week Bookshop£15.99Toby Fleishman isa41-year-old New York
hepatologist newly separated from his “self-
centred” wife, said Katy Guest in The Guardian.
Dating, he discovers, is much changed from
when he was last single: New York is now
“crawling” with women who want him, and
he can barely keep up for all the explicit selfies
and offers of casual sex. “So far, so very Philip
Roth,” said Siobhan Murphy in The Times.
Fortunately, however, “Taffy Brodesser-Akner is
one step ahead”. As the perspective broadens to
reveala“messier, sadder bigger picture”, and as
Toby’s “carnal carnival” comes to an end when
his wife suddenly disappears,Fleishman Is in
Troubleproves itself very different from what
we expected: it’sa“coruscating deconstruction
of all those other Toby-like tales”.
Brodesser-Akner,awell-known magazine
journalist, has produceda“sparkling” satire
on upper-class Manhattan that is also a
“languid examination of the death of a
relationship”, said Phoebe Luckhurst in the
London Evening Standard. “Debuts like this
don’t come along very often.”To order these titles or any other book in print, visit
theweek.co.uk/bookshopor speak toabookseller on020-3176 3835
Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm