The Sexual Life of Catherine M [Paperback]

A publishing sensation upon its original publication in France, Catherine Millet’s The Sexual Life of Catherine M is one of the most sexually explicit books ever written by a woman. Ostensibly a semi-autobiographical account of the sexual life of the author, the editor of an influential Parisian art magazine, the book is a frank and detailed account of Millet’s development from an awkward, guilt-ridden Catholic teenager to sophisticated Parisian intellectual and enthusiastic member of the singles bars, orgies and public sex spaces of Paris.

The book has no sequential narrative. Instead, it offers a frank and extremely graphic celebration of the pursuit and gratification of sex. Millet praises the virtues of anonymous sex, admitting that "I can account for forty-nine men whose sexual organs have penetrated mine and to whom I can attribute a name or, at least, in a few cases, an identity. But I cannot put a number on those that blur into anonymity". Nevertheless, she proceeds to offer page after page of exhausting descriptions of sexual couplings in groups in houses, car parks, offices, toilets, museums--the list and the permutations are endless, as are Millet’s descriptions of her own sexual organs and her ability to perform oral sex. Millet wants to celebrate the personal freedom and physical pleasure that casual, anonymous sex offers a woman, but this is never fully explored beyond her assertion that "the certainty that I could have sexual relations in any situation with any willing party" was "the lungfuls of fresh air you inhale as you walk to the end of the pier". Much of the book’s language is equally prosaic. Ultimately, this is a book about sexual fantasy, but as Millet herself admits, "sexual fantasies are far too personal for them ever really to be shared". Millet is too busy describing the literal nuts and bolts, the grunts and bumps of (resolutely heterosexual) sex to produce eroticism on a par with her obvious models, Pauline Reage’s Story of O and Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye, which leaves The Sexual Life of Catherine M feeling rather naughty, but strangely dated.--Jerry Brotton

‘Millet writes extremely well, describing her recollections vividly, and investing her physical largesse with a queenly magnanimity’

‘Readers may find this book disturbing or repellent, but they are unlikely to find it dull’

‘Millet’s achievement is that she curates or, more accurately, catalogues her sexual adventures with no sense of shame or remorse’

‘Millet is a woman who writes plainly; who tells the truth about desire’

‘Keeps crudeness at bay through an aloof, gracefully crystalline style as elegant as any French pornography since de Sade’

‘She proves again that Catholicism and filthy sex go together like salt beef and rye’

‘I thought it was the most honest book I had ever read on the subject of sex’

'One of the most explicit books about sex ever written by a woman' Edmund White

A window into a life of insatiable desire and uninhibited sex – this is Parisian art critic Catherine M.’s account of her sexual awakening and her unrestrained pursuit of pleasure. From the glamorous singles clubs of Paris to the Bois de Boulogne, she describes her erotic experiences in precise and beautiful detail.

A phenomenal bestseller throughout Europe, The Sexual Life of Catherine M., like the recent Fifty Shades of Grey, breaks with accepted ideas of sex and examines the alternative manifestations of desire. Told in spare, elegant prose, her story will shock, enlighten and liberate you.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

The Sexual Life of Catherine M. is the autobiography of a well-known Parisian art critic who likes to spend nights in the singles clubs of Paris and in the Bois de Boulogne where she has sex with a succession of anonymous men. Unlike many contemporary women writers, there is no guilt in Millet's narrative, no chronicles of use and abuse: on the contrary, she has no regrets about a life of sexual activity. Catherine Millet's writing is a subtle reflection on the boundaries of art and life and she uses her insights on the role of the body in modern art to set the scene for her multiple sexual encounters.

A phenomenal bestseller in France and in all other countries in which it has been published, The Sexual Life of Catherine M. is very much a manifesto of our times - when the sexual equality of women is a reality and where love and sex have gone their own separate ways. Like The Story of O, it is a truly shocking book that captures a decisive moment in our sexual history.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Catherine Millet, who lives in Paris, is an expert on modern art and is the editor of the magazine, Art Press. Her last book, L'Art Contemporain, was published in 1997. She curated the French section of the 1989 Sao Paulo Biennale and the French Pavilion at the 1995 Venice Biennale. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.