A review by peachtale
My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies by Nancy Friday

challenging dark informative inspiring tense medium-paced

4.0

When it first appeared, Nancy Friday's taboo-shattering bestseller "My Secret Garden" created a mixed storm of outrage and exhilaration. Those women who feared their erotic fantasies called it pornographic. Those women who read it recognised in its pages the hidden content of their own sexuality. More outspoken and graphic than any book before its time, "My Secret Garden" quickly became a classic study of female sexuality. Today, more than one million women hail this astonishing study as a groundbreaking book-- a liberating force adding a new dimension to their sexual fantasies and lives.

Nancy Friday's book is dated, not just due to the women replying to her are writing to her from a newspaper ad, but also the way the women talk about certain races in a way that you wouldn't be able to get away with in books today.  The rest of the book is rather interesting, if at time it does make you wonder does fantasies go beyond the boundaries of taboo? If you think of the taboo, does that make you as bad as a person who actually does it in real life? It's a lot to think about, although Friday does talk about it in regards to how fantasy doesn't mean anything because it's in your mind, it's just something that you can enjoy in the heat of the moment.

While it is stated to be research on the female fantasy - and perhaps that was Friday's original intention - Friday is a writer, she doesn't really have a big supply of women who wrote into her to make this actually research on female sexual fantasy.  However, she does bring to light the fact that men aren't/weren't secure about women having these fantasies or even admitting to them, she had a lot of trouble even getting her book published because it was a topic no one wanted to talk about.

So the question would be, was she right in bringing such a book out into the world? I have my own opinions about it, but if you have read this book, what do you think?