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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  Cover Copy
  
  “I will not be a wife in name only.”
  
  Rian Connor’s proposal of marriage should have been the happiest moment of
  Catherine Davenport’s life. He is her savior, her tutor in the ways of
  flirtation, the man she wants for her lover. But two impediments bar the way:
  the vicious assault that may have ruined her ability to enjoy any man’s touch;
  and the vindictive woman who will stop at nothing to regain Rian’s affection.
  
  “There can be no turning back once you have given yourself to me.”
  
  One exquisite night of completely mutual pleasure proves to Catherine that
  with Rian, the physical side of their union will bring only joy. But even her
  new husband cannot protect her from the diabolical scheming of his former
  mistress. Delivered into the hands of the madman who once delighted in
  tormenting her, Catherine is swept back to the place where it all began. And
  this time, the price could be her future with the man she is finally free 