Rating: 
Summary: Like Millet Herself, this Book Sucks
Review: What does it take for an average looking woman to attract a great number of men for a variety of sexual expressions. Not much -- she just has to be willing. Men must be clever or rich or charming or whatever, but a woman just has to show up. So, since she is supposed to be a writer and an intellectual, I was hoping for interesting views from that perspective, or at least above average tittilation. No such luck. Fortunately, I borrowed the book. It was returned clean.
Rating:
Summary: Without taste or plot
Review: I purchase _The Sexual Life of Catherine M._ out of curiosity. I sincerely regret it. It has been compared to the works of the Marquis de Sade. What a joke. This fails horribly as erotica AND as philosophy. It's not giving anyone any insight into anything. I found it hard to believe, and if this is true, how can anyone take the author seriously. I mean, come on, it jumps from her coldly-regarded orgies to "I love to ...". It's a waste. If this was amazing, ground-breaking etc, when she wrote it, something was lost in translation. And no, that's not just an ignorant American speaking out of jealousy or whatever. Not by a long shot. You can find better in letters to "gentlemen's magazines." Skip this one.
Rating:
Summary: Why?
Review: I have read this book twice now, and it continues to confound me. Why is the author addicted to loose, frequent and dangerous sex? Why can't she do a more adequate job of explaining the underlying reasons for her condition, considering it is a memoir on the subject? And most importantly, why did she write this book in the first place? Millet has struck an odd balance between telling all and telling nothing. We get a repetitive and poorly written (or is it poorly translated?) account of her swinging lifestyle, but not a satisfying understanding of her motives. She fails as a character by failing to reveal herself in her own book. She says in her trumped up intellectual way that she has these sexual experiences in order to hide her true self. I don't really understand what she means, but the manner in which her book is written leads me to believe that she is doing the same thing here. She may think she's being honest by telling us how many men she's had, but really it's just another way of covering up. At least that's my theory. Either that or she just made it all up for a buck. She got my dollar, don't let her get yours!
Rating: 
Summary: This memoir could use a foreword.
Review: Overall, I thought that this was an interesting memoir. As other reviewers have indicated, some parts were repetitive, namely the first part. But if one reads the first 120 or so pages (this isn't a long book,) the second half is quite interesting. I do think however, that the English version could have done with a foreward by the author, because it is not clear from her memoir why she engages in behavoir that even she acknowledges is not at all typical for girls of her background. In his review printed in the L.A. Times (which caused me to read this book-it's about an unusual human experience, and such memoirs are interesting to me whether it's this memoir or something totally different like "The Worst Journey in the World,") Mario Vargas Llosa says she's from "the great generation of '68," but Millet doesn't mention this in her memoir. Maybe it's just obvious to a French reader, but it wasn't obvious to me. So I could've done with a foreward by the authhor or her editor, but I get the impression this would be too much of a compromise on her behalf. It would be too unspeakably "bourgeois" to explain her motives in any way to an American readership. To explain why she likes things that other people generally don't might be to imply that her behavior needs some excuse, which is a thought that would be repellant to her. At least, I think so. This dryly written memoir is more than a bit confusing to me. It's outside of the average Amazon reader's moral experience.
Rating: 
Summary: I wish I could read French...
Review: Millet's book, all the rage in France, is not easy to pigeonhole. On the one hand, the descriptions of sex are graphic, but written in a rather detached style. It seems that she is almost daring one to become titillated. On the other hand there is much written that is not about sex, but about her life as an art critic, about Paris, about the non-discreet charms of the Parisian bourgeoisie and about being a modern, independent woman in a man's world. I thought the writing in English was great, and would have liked to see how closely it translated from the French. Alas, I will never know for sure if they have as many words in French for all the things described here in English and if they sound as silly in French as they sound here at times. Sometimes sex is very, very serious and other times it is very, very silly. I believe she captures both, including the times when it rises above all that is mundane and becomes something transcendant. It can also, as evidenced by too many episodes described here, be very debased. I do not buy her claim that she is able to get out of her body in these cases and not feel that the horrible, demeaning way she is often being treated, like a sack of very soft potatoes, is not personal. She describes some of her childhood and upbringing and makes a feeble attempt at self-ananlysis and the search for the reason why she can be so much more free of conventions than the average Parisian woman. Like many women who allow themselves to be disrespected and treated as objects, I suspect there is more to this story than what has been told so far. She hints at that when she talks about the contrast between her willingness to expose herself in these acts, to allow herself to be so vulnerable, and yet how she has a fairly conservative wardrobe and manner of conducting herself in her professional life.
Rating: 
Summary: An intellectual tour de sex!
Review: I admit it-I loved this book and am sure that I will re-read it soon. Catherine Millet is a writer of distinction who, perhaps because of her life addiction to the sexual act, has decided to write intellectually about something that is so much a part of our existence but all too often because of religion, relegated to the
shadows. Ms. Millet has confrounted that which has remained in the shadows and because of her extraordinary writing ability has been able to analize sex dispassionately and has therefore treated the act as an activity to be studied with conclusions drawn and judgments made.
By using this approach she has been able to analyze sexual activities without the "what's in it for me" of the male porn approach that unfortunately seems to rule the media today.
I was immensely taken by her French "intellectual posturing" so disdained by an earlier commentator because the beauty and depth of 209 pages of, not her sexual experiences but what she intellectualized about those experiences.
As many commentators have written this is not a book about the porn view of sex-it's a book about one woman's recollections of what she saw, felt and experienced in many and varied physical situations. She had an extraordinary ability to dissect minutely the various parts of the overall act: she talked about locations, times, numbers, duration and anything else that was part of the whole. However, and this is what will upset the unknowing reader, she only dealt obliquely with the porn topics that we have come to expect by vastly inferior writers.
Catherine Millet uses sex as a canvas upon which she paints her amazing view of the sexual landscape-a read not to be missed.
"The Sexual Life of Catherine M." is a mine of a book-one that can be referred to many, many times because of Ms. Millet's writing brilliance.
Rating:
Summary: The unapologetic pursuit of pleasure
Review: Catherine Millet is a successful French art critic. She remembers her Catholic childhood. She had a lively inner life, kept scrapbooks, and as an adult has led an unusual and enthusiastic sexual life. She has been in favor of men of all shapes, nationalities, classes, colors, ages, and sizes occupying her body (if not her mind) for a few moments, an evening, or an entire relationship. But this book is not about "relationships." Think of these four essays ("Numbers," "Space," "Confined Space," and "Details") as theory and criticism - not of art, but of desire and pleasure -rather than confession or apology. She's very smart, and she is not showing off. The images are vivid. She observes and describes an enormous variety of remembered sexual acts and subjective inner states. She deconstructs pleasure most satisfyingly. She explores the "why" of her pursuit, too. Millet lets readers in, but only if they are wise enough to read between the lines. Millet the enthusiastic participant was appreciative of bodies, desire, and earthly pleasure. She wanted connection and intensity, and clearly she craved company. Male bodies and male desire - along with her own - were the way to get it. She explains right off that she is submissive. This is key to understanding her story. She underwent some pain in the service of her desires, too. There's no shame here; in fact, she is refreshingly accepting. She is calmly reflective regarding "dirty words," asserting that their use during anonymous sex serves " to fuse us all together and to accelerate the annihilation of the senses that we are all trying to achieve in those moments." There emotion in her story, but it is screened at times, and it is unsoftened by love or romance, and free of guilt. Millet was, she claims frankly, not a seductress; she was simply available. It seems, too, that she was kind. Men were, too. There is frequently tenderness. Millet describes the feeling she loves: that she is literally disappearing into pleasure. At least one Renault and a Citroen Deux-Cheveux are in this book, too, along with YSL and other good French clothing. The French are loyal to their cars and their designers. Why did Millet write this book? Certainly not for any of the reasons that American readers might prefer, such as "healing," "recovery," or some plea for social or religious absolution. She does not recant. Millet's lack of apology or contrition and her frank self-revelation might inflame readers who are confused by her stance and her presentation. This book is neither "erotica" nor anguished memoir. Instead, it's four essays on an unconventional life. Millet as tour guide tells all, shows all, and, finally, asks a variety of good questions. I found myself thinking quite a lot, and greatly enjoying Millet's approach to her account of an astonishingly unconventional sexual life.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Boring Sex Life EVER
Review: I was totally bored reading this book and completely disgusted with the critics who recommended it. After the first chapter I put the book down and have no plans on reading any further. This is the first review I have ever written, but I wanted to warn everyone - DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. I don't know what the French were thinking in making this book a success!
Rating:
Summary: The Sexual LIfe of Catherine M.
Review: I have never been moved to write a review until now. Save your money! This is a terribly, terribly boring book of disjointed ramblings of a very sad woman. It is not or even the least bit erotic or interesting. Skip it, period.
Rating:
Summary: Just what stupid men need to read
Review: I had to put this book down after the first chapter becuase I felt like my hands were covered in semen. This is a hastily scrawled inventory of one woman's lovers -- and they are a cast of thousands. She takes on groups of men with every orifice and yet offers the reader no more inight about these experiences than if she'd been shopping for cucumbers. She is boring, possibly troubled but who cares? I was reminded of that group of chimpanzees that stays in rut the year-round and can barely provide itself with food for the time it spends in frenzied coitus. Two things about this book made me suspicious: First of all, the author claims to have had a vigourous bout of group rutting in the midst of a migraine, taking time-outs for the vomiting. Right. The other is her claim that not once did a group of men get out of control and harm her. This is ... tarted up as some kind of cutting-edge wisdom. It should do well in college towns.
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