52
August 2019 | REDONLINE.CO.UK8 YEARS
3 SEX LIVES
1 BOOK
Lisa Taddeo’s eight-year investigation into three
women’s sex lives is the book everyone will be talking
about this summer. Natasha Lunn meets the Three
Women author to find out how she’s pulled it off – and
what she learned about female desire along the wayS
loane is a restaurant owner married to
a man who likes to watch her have sex
with other people. Lina is a housewife
whose husband hasn’t touched her in
years. Maggie is a student developing
a bond with her teacher. These are
the women journalist Lisa Taddeo
interviewed over eight years – yes, eight
years! – for her book Three Women.
It’s a non-fiction story about three
women’s lives that’s really about much more: the intensity
of longing, the inequality of desire, the sting of judgement,
the absence of love in childhood, and how we try to find lost
parts of ourselves in the arms of another person. It’s painful
and beautiful, gutting and sexy. I don’t think I’ve read a book
that has captivated me as intensely as this one, which I still
think about, months later, in the quietest hours of the night.
I’m not the only one who has been stunned by
Taddeo’s ‘immersive reporting’: Elizabeth Gilbert called
it ‘a non-fiction literary masterpiece at the same level as
In Cold Blood’, and Gwyneth Paltrow said, ‘I literally
could not put it down.’ It also sold for a seven-figure deal
in the US and a six-figure deal in the UK. In other words,
it’s one of the most hyped books of the summer.
Female sexuality is a hot topic, but it’s the combination of
Taddeo’s ambitious idea, forensic reporting and intoxicating
writing that makes this book special. To write it, she uprooted
her life for nearly a decade. She moved to Indiana and North
Dakota. She drove across America six times. She left business
cards in slot machines, at universities, at a hormone treatment
group. After finding 20 women, Taddeo whittled them down
to three: Sloane, Lina and Maggie. She interviewed them in
person, on the phone, by text and by email, read their diaries,
spoke to their friends and families, and moved to their towns
so she could better understand their day-to-day lives.
She met Maggie in North Dakota, after reading about the
alleged sexual relationship she’d had with her teacher and the
subsequent trial. Taddeo thinks Maggie was open to sharing
such intimate details because ‘she’d been so judged by people
and had not been able to tell her story’. The book details
Maggie’s version of events – however, in 2015, her teacher
was acquitted of three of the five charges against him and
reinstated at the school. Maggie’s story is so truly
believable that you’ll feel outraged at the verdict. Has
the teacher responded? ‘I’ve tried to contact him numerous
times from the start,’ says Taddeo. ‘I would be very
interested in talking to him. But I didn’t hear back.’