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    Three Women
    Three Women
    Three Women
    Audiobook11 hours

    Three Women

    Written by Lisa Taddeo

    Narrated by Lisa Taddeo, Tara Lynne Barr, Marin Ireland and Mena Suvari

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    SOON TO BE A SERIES ON STARZ STARRING SHAILENE WOODLEY * BETTY GILPIN * DeWANDA WISE * GABRIELLE CREEVY * with BLAIR UNDERWOOD

    “Staggeringly intimate...Groundbreaking.” —Entertainment Weekly
    “A breathtaking and important book.” —Cheryl Strayed
    “Extraordinary...A nonfiction literary masterpiece.” —Elizabeth Gilbert

    #1 New York Times Bestseller and a Best Book of the Year by: The Washington Post * NPR * The Atlantic * New York Public Library * Vanity Fair * PBS * Time * Economist * Entertainment Weekly * Financial Times * Shelf Awareness * Guardian * Sunday Times * BBC * Esquire * Good Housekeeping * Elle * Real Simple * And more

    A riveting true story about the sex lives of three real American women “who are carnal, brave, and beautifully flawed” (People, Book of the Week), based on nearly a decade of reporting.

    Lina, a young mother in suburban Indiana whose marriage has lost its passion, reconnects with an old flame through social media and embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming. Maggie, a seventeen-year-old high school student in North Dakota, allegedly engages in a relationship with her married English teacher; the ensuing criminal trial turns their quiet community upside down. Sloane, a successful restaurant owner in an exclusive enclave of the Northeast, is happily married to a man who likes to watch her have sex with other men and women.

    Hailed as “a dazzling achievement” (Los Angeles Times) and “a riveting page-turner that explores desire, heartbreak, and infatuation in all its messy, complicated nuance” (The Washington Post), Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women has captivated readers, booksellers, and critics—and topped bestseller lists—worldwide. Based on eight years of immersive research, it is “an astonishing work of literary reportage” (The Atlantic) that introduces us to three unforgettable women—and one remarkable writer—whose experiences remind us that we are not alone.

    Editor's Note

    Hot summer read…

    New York magazine contributor Lisa Taddeo spent eight years (!) reporting on the intimate lives of three American women. The result is a sultry, clear-eyed work of narrative journalism that is so propulsive it reads more like a great work of fiction meant to be devoured on the beach than a non-fiction exploration of sex and female desire — but that’s part of its brilliance. Emma Roberts selected “Three Women” as her July 2019 Belletrist book club pick.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJul 9, 2019
    ISBN9781508282075
    Author

    Lisa Taddeo

    Lisa Taddeo spent eight years and thousands of hours tracking the women whose stories comprise Three Women, moving to the towns they lived in to better understand their lives. She has contributed to New York magazine, Esquire, Elle, Glamour and many other publications. Her short stories have won two Pushcart Prizes. She lives with her husband and daughter in New England.

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    Reviews for Three Women

    4/5

    748 ratings52 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Her prose was astonishing.

      Every word counted, and every simile was chosen not from low-hanging fruit but from perhaps the quirkiness of the author herself (?) to represent these women’s experiences.

      She dissects personalities in a beautiful way, calling Sloane’s flirting skills “finely calibrated” and had a complete understanding of their respective psyches.

      She and David K. Shipler are the only nonfiction writers who meet my (okay, I admit) VERY high standards for writing. I want to learn something, and I want the writer to make me feel like I’m in the room with them. I will read her other books in a heartbeat.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 1/5
      do not recommend the audiobook version, the narrator does not make the book interesting at all.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Heard this was good and I really wanted to listen to this book as I have a long daily commute. Unfortunately, the narrator has a strong lisp that makes listening to the book extremely difficult to do. I don’t have much time to sit and read but am definitely adding it to the my list of “sit-and-reads”!

      Note to the authors and publishers: Hire great narrators/voiceover actors to narrate your stories for audiobooks. I’ve seen and heard it do wonders. On the flip side, not having the right narrators/voiceover actors can have a negative effect on your stories.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      All women need to read/listen to this book and see he often we are our own worst enemies. Keep telling these stories. And write some about the good men out there.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      An honest and vulnerable telling of the complexities of sexuality and women’s sense of value. I hope this sparks conversations and opens the eyes and hearts of others to consider thinking through ideas and work to understand each other- not jump to judgment. We live in a society that judges women daily, let this book remind us that we don’t always have the whole story.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This is very raw and gritty and emotional. I love that the perspective is always the woman's, and that they don't sugar coat their motives or desires. They are full people with flaws and heartaches and longings. An excellent book to read without judgement.
    • 2/5
      Not sure why she wrote this story of 3 women from different communities and economic backgrounds their early sexual experiences woven around a theme of desire.
    • 5/5
      Me encantó el cast de narradores, grandes historias también !!
    • 5/5
      Phenomenal. The book we need. Taddeo is a master storyteller.
    • 5/5
      Very heavy book, bur very good. Im glad i read it
    • 3/5
      This read like a Gender studies required reading. Not a page-turner and I couldn't will myself to care about the characters.
    • 5/5
      This was a very good book, but it was very difficult to finish. I felt like I was looking through these women’s underwear drawers- invading their (very, VERY) private lives. The material was intimate, sometimes disturbing, and my own reactions made me take a hard look at myself and my judgements.

      I don’t know if I’ll listen to it again, but only because of my own discomfort. It is an excellent book.
    • 5/5
      An honest, sometimes hard to hear account of three women’s experiences in sex, love, and intimacy. A good read for all women.
    • 4/5
      Pretty heavy and hard to read at times, but I appreciated the rawness of these women’s experiences and the fact that they don’t always make the best decisions. It shone a light on many factors that can inform a woman’s relationship to sex, and how we are constantly sexualized while expected to be small, obedient and controlled. At the end, I definitely saw parts of myself in each woman.
    • 5/5
      Magic with words. Beautiful prose narrated incredibly. This is how I want women to be written about. Complex, grey, real, hard to understand yet yearning to be understood.
    • 4/5
      “She knows what to wear to every kind of dinner, the dress that is powerful, feminine, glowing and form fitting at once. Because there is a prescription, there is an exact way to get dressed to get what you want. It’s not about being sexy, it’s about being everything before the man thinks of what he wants.”
    • 5/5
      Amazing, I'm very moved by this book. An intricate and intimate account of women's experience in this world. Reads like a fiction but the thought that it's not only adds power to the narrative.
      (there's an error in chapter 6 of the audiobook, had to switch to the e-book for a bit)
    • 4/5
      Beautifully written look at women, desire, and how we perceive each other.
    • 5/5
      Important and real. Very thought-provoking! Highly recommended to everyone as it is very relevant!
    • 4/5
      Talks about all the injustice women go through even in the 21st century , how they are only held responsible and the other side of the coin is never examined .
    • 5/5
      Well written and engaging. Hard to put down. I can see every woman I know in this assortment of characters, including myself. A definite MUST read.
    • 4/5
      It was disturbing to read those stories but also gripping. I saw myself in each of the women, knowing that in a different time and place, I could have been any of them. Their stories could have been mine.
    • 5/5
      A wise truth filled book. Everything I would want to tell my daughter about women men and sex, society, human nature and it’s incredibly engaging at the same time
    • 5/5
      I think all women can relate to each character in ways. This book was amazing. I was sad when I got to the end and it was over.
    • 5/5
      Powerful, moving. A reminder of how The Dominant Narrative continues to suppress women and our voices
    • 1/5
      Sadly pathetic!! A sad story of three women who have been fcked over by men. Definitely NOT a story of desire!!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      I had to stop listening after the first few minutes. Unfortunately, the narrator is monotone and has a very prominent lisp. As a speech therapist, it is impossible for me to mentally filter past this and consume the content of the book. Sorry!
    • 4/5
      I think the reason a lot of people don't like this is that they expect it to be some universal reflection of women's experience as a whole, when it should be looked at as anecdotal case studies presented without any overarching "point" to be made. The author was limited to the three women who gave her permission to share their stories, who all happen to be cis, straight (perhaps one is bisexual, although this is never fully addressed), and white, so this is obviously not meant to represent women as a whole. This book made me super uncomfortable, but not in the ways I expected it to before reading.
    • 4/5
      I'm finding it hard to assimilate my thoughts on this book - I'm very conflicted.Lisa Taddeo tells the story of the real life passions of three women - one has had an affair with her high school teacher, another is having an affair with her first love and a third is enjoying additional sexual partners with her husband's eager assent (and often involvement). All three stories share the common thread of hot sexual desire, which Taddeo describes to us often with forensic detail.Taddeo wraps a prologue and epilogue around the stories, and halfway through I found myself returning to the prologue again with the question in my mind of "what, exactly, again is Taddeo trying to achieve with these stories?" And therein lies my issue with this book. What Taddeo wants this book to be about and what she actually writes about (or how she writes it) are not necessarily the same thing.In the prologue she writes that in her research she became interested in the difference between men and women when they are in the throws of desire; how for men their passion can be compartmentalised between during and after, whilst for women every aspect of the passion consumes their every moment. The stories that she chooses don't feel representative of the average woman on the street (OK - they aren't representative of the women that I typically know). These are three women who have some serious issues going on in their back stories, and they are women making choices that not every woman would make. And that would be fine in the context of simply enjoying reading about their loves and passion in their three very different situations. However - and this is where I take issue with this book - Taddeo loses sight of her own objective and the retelling of these stories becomes some sort of feminist polemic agains the men involved in the three stories. When, unsurprisingly, these three stories don't end up with happy endings, in Taddeo's hands the three women all become victims of a perceived cruel, emotional deception by the men, and by the end it feels like we've unwittingly been duped into signing up to some all-men-are-bastards sisterhood.Yes, the guys in these stories probably all sit somewhere in the lower echelon of the hierarchy of decent blokes, but somehow Taddeo manages to make this a broad brush sweeping generalisation of men (and indeed of us women - of how we love and the people we become when we're in love). These stories ring truer as stories of immature infatuation. These are the stories of women who chase other women's husbands, who seek the thrill of the bad boy and yet are surprised when they get hurt. And despite cheerleading for the women protagonists in these stories, Taddeo never champions the corner of the cheated on wives affected by these affairs, so this is where her feminism championing rings hollow for me.Which brings me back to my question throughout this book - just what point is Taddeo trying to make? That this is how women love? This is how some women love, but in Taddeo's hands it feels broader than that.I also question its supposed categorisation as non-fiction - the level of detail included belied what anyone would have been able to truly recount, and somehow I therefore lost the voice of the women themselves and it became all about Taddeo's voice and perception.So why the best-selling plaudits? Well, it does feel visceral and depicts well the raw spectrum of emotions that the women feel as the sun rises and sets on their various affairs. Taddeo writes fearlessly and quite rightly unashamedly about the women's sexual desires with a distinct voice and turn of phrase, and all of that I applaud and enjoyed in the book. But I can't get past the fact that somehow her sincerity in recounting these women's stories doesn't ring true and her true objective is to bend them to some version of the book that she wants to write about.3.5 stars - a great book for a book club discussion, but this book was too full of Taddeo's personal agenda for my taste.
    • 5/5
      While this was, at times, painful to read I will be thinking about it for a long time. I really appreciated how Taddeo told each woman's story without judgement or sentimentality. She presents their stories with care and empathy, and avoids ever implying that they could have (or should have) made different choices.