title: The Sexual Life of Catherine M.
author:  Catherine Millet 
description: Millet, art critic and editor of Art Press, has become a literary sensation in France with the publication of this graphic memoir of some 30 years of her sexual adventures. Millet's "gift for observation" and her "solid superego" are as useful in her career as an art critic as they are in her erotic explorations: her ability to concentrate and observe puts her inside "other people's skins." Comparisons have been made to The Story Of O, but Millet is more in the tradition of Jean Genet and Violette Leduc, whose descriptions of their sexual encounters were not meant to titillate so much as to explore the meaning of the erotic. Millet's "quest for the sexual grail" takes her to group orgies, gang bangs in French parks and other serial sex escapades. Before long, the sex begins to seem utterly routine, in spite of the elaborate staging. Millet and her readers are then free to consider more closely some questions she raises: how oral sex compares to vaginal intercourse; why sex in disgusting circumstances is not about "self-abasement," but raising oneself "above all prejudice"; or why solitary sex is more pleasurable for her than sex with a partner. Toward the end of this curiously graceful memoir, Millet comes close to explaining her need for all this sex: only by sloughing off the "mechanical body" she'd been born with could she experience actual sexual pleasure. While women readers will find much of interest, male readers may have to overcome a certain emperor's new clothes-type discomfort, as they realize that Millet may know more about the male body than they do. <br />Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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  DANGEROUS QUESTIONS
  
  Catherine had what she wanted—a proposal from the irreproachable Earl of
  Strickland. Why then did she tremble when Stephen Archibald asked "Do you love
  him?"
  
  And why did she answer "N-no"?
  
  "You are certain?" There was no question about it this time. His breath was
  warm and moist against her ear, causing an involuntary shiver. What was he
  doing to her? Why did she not simply push him away?
  
  "Y-yes, I am certain," she heard herself saying, as his hand reached up to her
  neck and began untying the ribbon of her bonnet. The soft touch of his fingers
  upon her throat was making it almost impossible to breathe.
  
  His lips came down on hers. They were unexpectedly soft and warm from the sun
  when they touched hers, moving slowly in a way she could never have imagined,
  tasting, exploring, tantalizing, as her mouth opened under his, and became
  more insistent.
  
  And she could only ask herself what was she doing, even as her heart beat out
  the answer she could 