Three Women is the apt title for Taddeo’s literary non-fiction reporting on the sex lives of three women: Maggie, a 17 year old in a relationship with her high school teacher; Lina, a suburban wife having a one-sided love affair with her high school boyfriend; and Sloane, a married restaurant owner who has sleeps with men her husband picks out for her.
Taddeo writes extremely well- this is non-fiction that reads like fiction. Her skill is not only how she strings together a sentence, but the stylistic choices that she makes. The ‘plot’ for each women’s story line unfurls at a good clip, which keeps things interesting, as do the occasional flashbacks that provide background information about how each woman came to the place where she makes certain choices. Taddeo also switches into the second tense at certain points which is both unusual (I can’t remember the last book I read that included second person) and clever- it forces the reader into the position of the woman being reported on. In the specific context of women discussing their sexuality and their choices (or lack thereof), it is a powerful tense choice.
And now for the parts that I found tougher. Although the back cover blurb frames Taddeo’s reporting as being about the sexuality and desire of these three women- and they are, to an extent- what quickly becomes apparent in all of the women’s stories is how little actual agency they often have. Maggie likes to believe that she had control in her relationship with her teacher, but Taddeo is expert at showing us the between the lines lack of control not only during the relationship but in the breakup and trial that follow. Lina becomes very clear about expressing her sexual desires, but they are always coached in how her lover will respond to them, what will excite him, what might make him love her. Sloane is trapped by a desire to be perfect, and to reconcile her sexual desires in a way that let her feel both like these desires are hers rather than her husbands and that she is still a good person. When one of their threesomes goes awry, her husband leaves her hanging to take the anger- and blame- from the wife of their threesome partner.
Back to that point about white women- Taddeo notes that she’d talked with women of colour about their sexual desires, but they had eventually declined to include their stories in her reporting. This is a large miss- to premise that this story can represent different American women’s sex lives and then have all of these women be so similar in background is inaccurate. (I suppose Taddeo might say that she is not trying to generalize, that all women’s stories are unique and different, but that rings hollow in a post BLM world).
Finally, I had a really hard time with the facts of Maggie’s story, which gets the bulk of Taddeo’s reporting (maybe twice as much as Sloane). I read My Dark Vanessa earlier this year, and it did a really good – but disturbing- job of showing the grooming process that a teacher preying on a student might use, as well as the lingering mental health consequences. Maggie’s story is similar, and I found these parts hard to read. Even harder was the trial, where the community rallied around Maggie’s teacher/abuser, who remains a teacher (even garnering North Dakota’s Teacher of the Year Award) in Fargo, North Dakota. Maggie is the only one of the three who agreed to use her real name, so you can google the appalling details (and smug teacher photos) yourself. I know that these outcomes are common, but its so heartbreaking to be there with Maggie as the community turns on her.