Book Details

Three Women is an astonishing act of imaginative empathy and a gift to women around the world who feel like their desires are ignored and their voices aren't heard. This is a book that blazes, glitters and cuts to the heart of who we are. I'm not sure that a book can do much more (Sunday Times)

When I picked it up, I felt I'd been waiting half my life to read it; when I put it down, it was as though I had been disembowelled. There isn't a woman alive who won't recognise - her stomach lurching, her heart beating wildly - something of what Maggie, Lina and Sloane go through. It pulses like an artery (Rachel Cooke Observer)

An extraordinary piece of non-fiction - a page-rippingly intimate and compelling narration of the desires and sexual proclivities of three real women. Taddeo does not sensationalise, but nor is she coy; the narrative crackles with the visceral details of eroticism. The result feels like a new genre (The Times)

Three Women is a book with the thrill of the new and you can expect it to dominate WhatsApp threads, line tube carriages and pop up in foreign AirBnbs for years to come. Taddeo hasn't just caught a moment, she has spawned a new genre. Three Women takes the sort of forensic, no-detail-spared reporting we associate with highbrow American journalism, and the sex obsessions of those priapic bards of twentieth-century American literature, Philip Roth, John Updike, Saul Bellow et al, and applies it to a subject that, until now, society has deemed beneath consideration: female desire. It's the romantic equivalent of true crime. Taddeo understands addictive love better than most novelists writing today (Evening Standard)

Extraordinary. I can't remember the last time a book affected me as profoundly as Three Women (Elizabeth Gilbert)

It is the deepest dive into our neighbours' consciousnesses that I've ever read, so immersive it approaches the Tolstoyan, and its narcotic pleasures mainline the only thing that can truly save us: empathy (Adam Ross)

The book every man should read this summer. An incredible feat, Three Women has the qualities and the momentum to become a literary sensation (Esquire)

This is the In Cold Blood of women's sexuality. A non-fiction novel of such recurring darkness, truth and astonishment I will probably re-read it every year of my life (Caitlin Moran)

I literally could not put it down (Gwyneth Paltrow)

As gripping as the most gripping thriller. Moving, immersive, surprising, elegantly written ... You will love it (Marian Keyes)

'A book that blazes, glitters and cuts to the heart of who we are. I'm not sure that a book can do much more' SUNDAY TIMES

'The kind of bold, timely, once-in-a-generation book that every house should have a copy of, and probably will before too long' NEW STATESMAN

'Extraordinary' JOJO MOYES

'I will probably re-read it every year of my life' CAITLIN MORAN

All Lina wanted was to be desired. How did she end up in a marriage with two children and a husband who wouldn't touch her?

All Maggie wanted was to be understood. How did she end up in a relationship with her teacher and then in court, a hated pariah in her small town?

All Sloane wanted was to be admired. How did she end up a sexual object of men, including her husband, who liked to watch her have sex with other men and women?

Three Women is a record of unmet needs, unspoken thoughts, disappointments, hopes and unrelenting obsessions.

'A masterpiece' ELIZABETH GILBERT

'Addictive' DOLLY ALDERTON

'Riveting, assured and scorchingly original' DAVE EGGERS

'Indescribably magnificent' MARIAN KEYES

'Astounding' JESSIE BURTON