Praise for The Sexual Life of Catherine M.:
"[An] exquisite, philosophical, imaginative, precisely reported memoir … The Sexual Life of Catherine M. offers a wholly unique voice: brilliantly literate, utterly unabashed, exactingly concrete, consistently provocative. The excellence of Millet's memoir rests not in numbers … but in Proustian memories and perceptions suffused with sex and insight."
—Carlin Romano, The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Remarkable … The Sexual Life of Catherine M. is refreshingly unapologetic in its enthusiasm for the sexual wilderness… . She answers for her particular enthusiasms with a grace and a curiosity that are far more winning than the common American gambit of presenting one's pathology and the struggle with it as way stations on the road to salvation."
—Will Blythe, Elle
"[A] maverick … an epicure … [Her] aloof, gracefully crystalline style is as elegant as any French pornography since Sade… . Beyond the book's stylistic brilliance, one of the reasons it appeals is that unlike earlier female pornographers—Erica Jong comes to mind—Millet never proselytizes."
—Francine du Plessix Gray, Vogue
"Her sex life—ranging from her first group coupling just weeks after losing her virginity to her recent romps with her steady lover—is treated frankly enough to keep you engrossed (even after the umpteenth orgy) and with sufficient cerebral heft to remind you that the book you can't put down is more than dirty."
—Mark Healy, GQ
"It is truly a masterpiece of sexual exploration and I've no doubt that the book will be a classic of sexual literature."
—Alistair Highet, The Hartford Courant
"An intelligent reflection, crude, unusually frank."
—Mario Vargas Llosa, Los Angeles Times
"[The Sexual Life of Catherine M. contains] no invention, no elusiveness, no embroidery. The truth … of her full, orgiastic, freely offered, frenzied, consuming, liberated, spontaneous sexual life … Astonishing."
—Penelope Rault, Jalouse (France)
"Millet's book strikes me not only as provocative, but dangerous… . Her entire sexual stance … is an impudent and fundamentally inarguable challenge to the assumptions about female sexuality on which most of the world's social arrangements are built."
—Vince Passaro, New York Observer
"[Millet's] prose is lovely and surprising… . The Sexual Life of Catherine M. gives us a titillating glimpse of Millet's alternative universe, where everyday objects reveal themselves to be sex toys and offices become pleasure domes."
—Joy Press, The Village Voice
"If you want a book that's guaranteed to be picked up by every member at your summer house (unless your Hamptons harem happens to be guarded by eunuchs), this is the one."
—New York Magazine
"[A] stylistic tour de force recounting three decades of sexual exploits … This book's pleasures are first and foremost literary… . It is a rare treat to listen to a measured intelligence delve into the folds of its own salacious sexual history with such frankness and with such little interest in scandal… . A Proustian whole far greater than the sum of its parts … Relax, sit back, and enjoy."
—Saul Anton, Bookforum
"[The Sexual Life of Catherine M.] evoked from most critics the sort of feigned boredom people offer up when they are intensely disturbed by sexual honesty. The joke was on them."
—Charles Taylor, Newsday
"Writing a subversive book today seems impossible. Yet that is just what Millet does… . After Sade, you could have said that no one could do it better. Millet surprises exactly for this reason… . An elegy to the body, to human fraternity, an excellent book."
—La Razón (Spain)
"A mind-blowing relief. She guiltlessly philosophizes about getting laid and giving head in the best French tradition… . To be brilliant and to be brilliant at giving head—Sexual Life is a fantasy well worth importing."
—Fantomina Haywood, Bust
"The graceful, thoughtful, oddly charming, and profoundly pornographic account of a French intellectual's life of extreme sexuality… [This] memoir will surely be the most blatantly pornographic read many will encounter this year… . A bold, intelligent, pioneering tour de force."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A smoldering slim volume that will color your cheeks quicker than the midday sun… . In the book, [Millet] unabashedly chronicles three decades of her own unbridled sexual exploration."
—Michael Rovner, New York Post
"A wild quest for sex for sex's sake … A woman of deliberate purpose, Catherine Millet… relates her sexual life without trembling, and allows us to share her pleasures… . A book of a miraculous grace."
—Daniel Bougnoux, Le Monde (France)
"Porn for the intelligentsia?… There's a shortage of literature that can be compared to The Sexual Life of Catherine M., which is intelligently brimming with graphic descriptions of swanky club orgies, assembly-line penetrations, and 'impromptu fucks in the countryside' while remaining lustily unconcerned about anything outside the supposedly infinite possibilities of random sex."
—Norene Cashen, San Antonio Current
"Excellent."
—Jane
"Brave … Her book makes The Story of O feel as winsome as Annie Hall."
—John Powers, LA Weekly
"From Cyrano de Bergerac to Marquis de Sade, from Choderlos de Laclos to Casanova, they would, breathless with admiration, have laid at the feet of Catherine Millet."
—NRC Handelsblad (Netherlands)
"Her truthfulness and simplicity are captivating. She provides an intelligent contemplation of sex that is free of Bataille's nastiness [and] de Sade's discomfort."
—Lisa Lambert, Willamette Week
"[An] explicit journal of unending sexual availability … Ms. Millet's book revels in its own sexual laissez-faire; like Tracey Emin's bed, it turns self-revelation into artistic statement."
—Michael Fishwick, The Economist
"Delightfully unabashed … Readers of all persuasions about sex will derive something of value from Millet's honest, deeply personal exploration of her desires."
—Bonnie Johnston, Booklist
"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."
—Publishers Weekly
"A sex book in the tradition of The Story of O. and de Sade—just as classic and graphic … but more personal… The sex scenes Millet sets and performs are many, but they're imbedded within far more intimate disclosures about identity, the process of self-awareness, and varying degrees of intimacy."
—Alex Richmond, Philadelphia City Paper
