Catherine Millet. The Sexual Life of Catherine M, trans. Adriana Hunter. London: Serpent’s Tail, 2002 [Book review]

Posited as an autobiographical account, [Catherine Millet's The Sexual Life of Catherine M] is a painstakingly detailed and at times shocking exploration into the darkest terrain of one woman's sex life, focussing in particular, on her guiltless unabashed participation in group sex. The more salacious elements (and there are many) of the French art critic's memoir are by now well known. As a young woman in 1960s and 1970s Paris, Catherine Millet was introduced to group sex at the age of 18, some weeks after her first sexual encounter. Finding the cumbersome pawing of teenage love offensive, she spent her 20s and 30s pinned down by a total of more than 5000 men in a series of anonymous orgies.