The work is a subjective and immersive experience, with Taddeo the conduit for the inner monologues of the lives of others. Unlike more traditional non-fiction, we are unabashedly shown only one side to each story – that of Lina, Maggie, and Sloane. Taddeo articulates the inner truth of these women, but no matter how close Taddeo gets (and through first-person narration she comes very close), these women are not speaking directly for themselves – they are, after all, not writing their own memoirs. Instead, they have entered into a collaboration with Taddeo, chronicling, remembering, and perhaps revising their own experiences.

This work would not have been possible without the willing participation of the three women who agreed to their de-identified stories being published. But as with any work of non-fiction, what happens after the journalists leave is as important as what happens when they are there. One wonders whether these women have outed themselves in their real lives – the lives that continue beyond publication. Has this truth-telling changed their desires? Have any of their stories had a happy ending? Most intriguingly, do these women now know one another?

Lisa Taddeo (photograph by J. Waite)

The original subject was to be men, or more specifically, the desires that lead heterosexual men to ‘overturn an empire for a girl on bended knee’. Taddeo quickly found these stories repetitive and uninspiring. After all, many a man has had family, reputation, and career ended by affairs of the heart, particularly in the post-#MeToo era. So Taddeo turned to women. Historically speaking, women’s stories have never attracted the airtime men’s stories receive. By daring to focus on the motivations, ambiguities, and desires of women, Taddeo creates something new – a narrative of the complexity of desire in contemporary North America.

Lina, Maggie, and Sloane are different ages, with varied experiences and backgrounds. Lina is conducting an affair with an ex-high school boyfriend. Maggie is holding her high school teacher, who groomed her for underage sex, to account. Sloane is playing out the fantasies of her husband, pursuing group sex and affairs at his bidding. But they are not as different as the reader might expect.

These women are not representative. They are white heterosexual women (not unlike Taddeo herself) who find themselves at the mercy of (or desperate to seek out) the male gaze. Where is the story of a woman who desires women? Or the story of a women who does not need a man? Vivid, intimate, and honest, these stories do not explore the liberation of women’s desire. They are the stories of women who are wrapped up in what men think of them.

Take Lina, for example. Lina leaves a passionless marriage and embarks on an affair with a man with a pot belly and a drinking habit who fucks her in the back of her car and doesn’t notice the new underwear she bought but can’t afford. This can be read as passion, yes. It can also be read as a desperate need for physical intimacy and a woman defining herself through the attention of an uninterested man.

It is not enough to discuss how Three Women explores the messy beginnings and endings of desire. The book reminds us that trauma is a part of so many women’s stories. All three women were abused when young. The men were never brought to justice and these women carry the trauma for the rest of their lives. And trauma, of course, impacts on desire.

Taddeo is a pioneer of contemporary and immersive creative non-fiction. Three Women is a literary achievement, but not an unambiguous one. And the stories of Lina, Maggie, and Sloane are not over. One wonders if Taddeo will revisit these women and explore the consequences of this anonymous truth-telling, or if the women themselves will one day choose to tell their own stories in their own voices.