“Engrossing, confronting and evidenced” SYP LDN reads Three Women

Posted on March 16, 2021 in London

CW: abuse; weight loss

The snows of February might have left us at SYP LDN but, if you can look past the rain, we might be getting the first inkling of Spring. This March, we’re celebrating Women’s History Month a little differently, our defiance and wonder at the brilliance of women locked down behind Zoom screens, but wow did we have a lot to discuss!

This March, SYP London Book Club brought us an engrossing non-fiction from American author and journalist Lisa Taddeo who caused a stir on both sides of the Atlantic when she published this debut in 2019. On the 9^th March 2021, we gathered around our Zoom screens with a steaming mug of tea/ cheeky glass of wine (delete as appropriate) to discuss Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women.

Have you read it yet? Love it or hate this, this book seems to be a little bit Marmite for lots of us. Let us know what you thought on our Twitter!

“This book filled me with rage!”

“I couldn’t decide whether the women made choices or choices were made for them.”

“Half the time I forgot I was reading non-fiction.”

“I didn’t feel empowered reading it.”

We were divided over Three Women. Published in 2019, Taddeo’s debut tells the real-life stories of three young, straight, white women in the United States, and their complicated relationships with desire and the men surrounding them.

This book seems to divide the generations! One attendee described how, having read the book at another book club with a slightly older readership, older women seemed unfazed and untroubled by the difficulties and hardships faced by Taddeo’s Lina, Maggie and Sloane, while younger women seemed to find the book more disturbing. We asked the extent to which our generation affects our responses to both women’s desire and the abuses women suffer. Perhaps what seemed normal in previous generations is no longer as accepted among younger women.

We went on to discuss how amazingly researched the book is! Taddeo spent eight years researching eight women across the United States, sometimes moving into the towns in question to really get absorbed in the lifestyle, before settling on Maggie, Sloane and Lina. Interestingly, only Maggie retained her real name and the court case surrounding her relationship with her high school teacher, Aaron Knodel, is available to the public online. We asked whether including eight women would have been better or worse, pointing to the limited demographic of looking at three straight, white women but asking whether Taddeo could have retained the depth of the stories for all eight.

We also discussed the strange way that the narrative FEELS like fiction. The language can be excessively descriptive and we often had to remind ourselves that it’s non-fiction. However, Three Women does explore the variation of toxic male-female relationships that women experience, as well as the intensity of that first and quite obsessive love, and the pressure to look a certain way in terms of weight and diets.

We agreed we would have liked to see more solidarity from the other women in Maggie, Lina and Sloane’s lives but, unlike fiction, reality can’t be tied up into quite so neat a narrative. Often, the women seemed lonely and isolated while very few, if any, of the men came across well.

A thoughtful and confronting book for us this March, and onto – perhaps – happier reading in April! Join us in April where, in honour of April Fool’s, we’ll be discussing Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians!

As ever, keep an eye on our socials for new events and we’ll be bringing you all the latest in our April newsletter!

Take care!