This is one of the most tedious books I have ever read. I like vulgarity and a healthy appetite for lots of sex as much as the next man. I looked forward to reading an intelligent woman writing about her extraordinary appetite for group sex in public and private places.
However , this book is muddled , vague, unfocused and downright dull.Maybe it's the translation but I suspect it was pretentious in French and has not changed much in translation.
How someone who is(was?) the editor of a French art magazine could write such dreary stuff I do not know.
It has no colour, no humour, no pace, no joie de vivre, nothing.

I read with interest the opinions of the other reviewers and find myself heartily disagreeing with many of their conclusions. I do not view this book as brave or groundbreaking nor is it insightful or erotic. It is most like someone on her psychiatrist's couch blurting out the minutia of her life. It is all about her, most of her sex partners were just nameless, faceless genitals. Who could conceivably care about this other than her? Talk about self-indulgent.

I agree that it is an unapologetic look at her life but the world is full of ninnies that feel justified in however they choose to live their lives and then feel compelled to us all about it. I don't give a whit about her sexual escapades whether she had one lover or one million lovers. That is her business but the real issue here is why she has lived her life in this manner. That is what interested me in the book. Sadly, she alludes to some childhood issues but never delves deeply enough into her own psyche for any revelation, any insight, an epiphany of any kind. I struggled to get through this short book.

It is always fun to have an erotic work presented in a serious way and have it become popular. This was the case with Nicholson Baker's fictional _Vox_ some years back, and of course the short stories of Anaïs Nin. Good old Grove Press has been seriously printing erotic books for decades, and now has produced _The Sexual Life of Catherine M._ (note the ironic homage to _The Story of O_) by Catherine Millet. Millet is the editor of the Paris magazine _Art Press_, and has written several serious books on contemporary art. When her memoir was published in France last year, there were many intellectuals who were nfuriated that she was somehow trying to purge her sexual demons by publishing such a frank memoir about some extraordinary sexual adventures. In the US, her book won't infuriate intellectuals as much as it will infuriate the prudish and those who are offended by a woman of broad sexual appetite satisfying that appetite; but it also may well offend those who buy it thinking that every page will have words to inflame the passion and excite the imagination. This isn't a book for them.

Let us be clear: there is plenty of sex in the book. What Millet likes is men, lots of men, often in rapid sequence and simultaneously. Her lifelong hobby seems to have been orgies, swinging clubs, and being passed from one satisfied man to another. She describes plenty of episodes of men, more or less unknown to her, penetrating, licking, caressing; if this is disturbing, one only has to recall that she was enjoying it as were they, and that one has one's own sexual peccadilloes to nurture. The prose here is in translation (by Adriana Hunter), and so it is hard to tell how much to praise Millet for the words themselves, but in this edition they are vivid but also detached. She is not a seductress. She was simply available: "...this note that a friend put in a diary, which still gives me a glow of pride: 'Catherine, who deserves the highest praise for her calmness and availability in every situation.'" She writes often with sly wit; doing a particular stroke on a partner, "With my back bent and my frenetic arm movements, I must have looked very like a housewife desperately trying to stop a sauce from curdling, or someone proudly finishing up a home improvement." Her availability must have served her well: "I have never had to suffer any kind of clumsiness or brutality, and I have generally been lucky with the attentiveness of my partners."

Only fleeting parts of this book could serve as sexual stimulants. Millet has obviously enjoyed her sexual life, and has reflected intelligently on it in a non-euphemistic and frank way. Many of the activities described are exhausting, some depressing, but some are as exhilarating as exploring uncharted lands. To have achieved her status in her career, she must have skills in communicating and getting along with people in other than sexual ways, but little of that is on display here. She has had relations with hundreds of men, and can count only 49 whose faces she would recognize. There is no feminist harangue here, no claim of victory. She does not have the way most women would want to conduct themselves, nor is hers a model to which to aspire. But unapologetic, and lucid, her book gives a fascinating look at woman fulfilling her life in a unique way.