Three White Women

My initial rating of this book was 5 stars because it matched my expectations from reading the brief description, taking a journalistic dive into the sex lives of three women and a promised “riveting page-turner that explores desire, heartbreak, and infatuation in all its messy, complicated nuance.” Which, to Taddeo's credit, it mostly was. This book is way out of my repressed comfort zone and when I finished it I decided it was "three real American women," and I did relate to a piece of each women's story, and it did make me feel a little less alone. However, going back and reading all the hype from well-respected authors and literary critics I began to take issue with things:

“A work of deep observation, long conversations, and a kind of journalistic alchemy”

Hmm..nope. Sorry. This book felt like the farthest thing from decades worth of reporting. It felt like the author sat down in the room that Lina was in, got her story along with Sloane's, embellished the bejesus out of both of them, and then happened to turn on the TV when Maggie was pressing charges against her creepy, sexually abusive teacher. I realized the reason I had connected with these women and felt a little less alone was because it read like, and could have been, fiction. Specifically young adult fiction. Specifically young adult fiction about white middle class girls/women. Kind of like two books that star in two of these women's narratives perhaps? Called Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey maybe?

I got absolutely zero sense that much of any journalism or investigating went into any of these stories, especially with the end of the book, which just dropped off into nothing. Obviously, it being non-fiction I wasn't expecting a warm fuzzy ending, or any "ending" at all, for these women, but after DECADES of reporting, Taddeo couldn't put any more effort into an ending? A wrap-up? Some insightful look into feminism? Too much to ask for her to draw a parallel between Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey (which started as Twilight fan fiction)? That two of these three women felt validated by two books that are disgustingly degrading towards women and set up an entire generation of young women to expect a sparkling, stalking, vampire/a man with a sex contract to show up and give their lives meaning?

I understand her intention behind displaying these relationships was to show how messy and complicated female desire is, but that didn't come even through the slightest crack. There was nothing in this book about female desire, it was a woman who resents the sex life she has along with her husband, a woman who wants to be touched and loved but settles for a guy who treats her like garbage and meets to have sex in a parking lot in the woods, and an extremely out of place rape victim that somehow Taddeo tries to spin as a story of desire, when it clearly comes through that this young girl's world was destroyed and has nothing to do with her sexual desire. It had everything to do with being molested by a teacher and frankly I think it was wrong for Taddeo to include this at all. It was a disservice to Maggie and so many girls in these horrific situations.

It was too much to ask of Taddeo to actually make any sort of point with this book other than this: “When girls are without fathers they look under every manhole cover." What the actual **** is that? That is insulting, for a start, as well as a complete 180 on what I thought this book was supposed to be. It was supposed to be about feminine desire, about women, real women and their real lives. I didn't see anything on feminine desire except that the men in these women's lives dictate their identity and I saw nothing about "real women" and their lives except that two out of these particular three upper middle class white women let men dictate their identity. And the third woman was a victim who had her life ruined by a disgusting pervert, a misogynistic society, and a backwards town.

This is not a book about female desire or female empowerment. It's a glimpse into the lives of three women that I still cannot believe required a decade devoted to "journalism" to write.

Note about the audiobook: who thought SIXTY MINUTE TRACKS was a justifiable decision? Seriously.