Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Three Women - Drei Frauen

Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Three Women - Drei Frauen by Lisa Taddeo

106 reviews

carlytenille's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

Content Warnings

garibae's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional funny inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

Content Warnings

leslee's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.5

This was not an easy read. I would not go as far as to say that this book triggered me but it was difficult to get through and yet I could not put it down. This is a book that made me think about womanhood as not a prison but as a liminal space. “Three Women” has a limited scope - it primarily focuses on white women and their relationships with men. There are fragments about their relationships (or lack thereof) with other women woven into the narratives of the book, but as a reader I wanted so much more of that. I found myself wanting to know less about the men that they loved and more about the women that the titular three women had been betrayed by. I think that could have spoken volumes about female desires.

Overall - I enjoyed the book. It made me think. It made me want to ask questions.

Content Warnings

quills4days's review against another edition

Go to review page

inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

Content Warnings

giulia_bis's review against another edition

Go to review page

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.25

Content Warnings

lookingforwonder's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional medium-paced

3.0

This book tells the true stories of three women and how sexual desire played into their lives. What it is that gave them their particular desires, from the families to their ages to their history with trauma, and how they reacted to others finding out about their sex lives, and how others reacted to them.

Maggie has the strongest narrative. Her teacher groomed her and "corrupted" her at 17 years old, and six years later she reports the crime. It is the narrative the book starts and ends with, and definitely has the most haunting result of all of them. This story breaks down what we may logically think a grooming situation would be like isn't the way we think it would be. How her abuser, Aaron Knodel (and that is his real name), was able to get away with it. How he took a vulnerable young woman's craving for love and belonging to sate himself and break her down.

Lina is a 30-something year old woman whose husband no longer even touches her. She separates from her husband and has an affair with her a high school ex-boyfriend. In my opinion, this was the weakest of the three women's stories. Perhaps because Taddeo did not see the conclusion of their relationship. Her chapters are mostly descriptive sex scenes and while there is definitely the complicated dynamic she has with this ex-boyfriend, it wasn't anything revealing or particularly important, imo. The one interesting insight came at the very end, in the epilogue, and only lasted a paragraph.

Sloane is a woman who is married and desired greatly by her husband, and part of their sex life is letting other men and women into their bed. Sloane grew up wealthy and beautiful, and married a chef. In the beginning, it was the same type of story you'd expect--societal pressure of a pretty, privileged white woman. Her part was also the smallest, which made me wonder why she was included in the first place. But at the end, other details pull together that link Sloane's early family life with her life with her husband now, and how their preferences impact others around them.

The descriptive writing in this book in probably its strongest point. Even in Lina's chapters, which were generally the least interesting to me, the details are enough to savor and really understand and see the point of view of each of these three women's stories.

Content Warnings