Review by Booklist Review
If you've grown up in a family inept at sharing emotions, sustaining loving relationships can be an impossible feat. New Yorker Cohen learned little about love or self-esteem from her wealthy, divorced, and permissive parents--whom she gently portrays as self-absorbed, indulgent, and ineffectual--but she did discover that holding a boy's attention satisfied her terrible need for validation, however briefly. And so throughout high school and college, Cohen obsessively played the risky game of seduction and casual, even contemptuous, unsafe, and nonconsensual sex. As with all addictions, the crash was far greater than the rush. Cohen fictionalized the promiscuity syndrome in a young adult novel, Easy (2006), and now compulsively recounts her own wrenching experiences and eventual success in kicking this destructive habit. Her chronicle of dangerous sex and failed relationships is painfully honest, the psychology of her insights covertly sophisticated. Her candor may help under-21 readers steer clear of the whole mess, while those who survived similar ordeals will appreciate her tale of survival, and yet others will acquire understanding of young women under a similar dark spell.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Half NPR announcer, half phone-sex operator, Cynthia Holloway treats Cohen's memoir of youthful sexuality and familial disarray with a mixture of breathless eroticism and This American Life deadpan. In either style, Holloway reads intimately, drawing in listeners with her breathy, close-miked voice. There is something icky and quasi-pornographic about having the details of real-life teenage sexuality shared so familiarly, but Holloway's voice--knowing, lightly ironic, capable of sounding adolescent while remaining firmly adult--salvages the situation. Like those NPR voices, Holloway maintains a crucial distance from the story she shares, immersing herself in the tangled folds of adolescent confusion while indicating, ever so subtly, her separation from it. A Hyperion hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 11). (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This is a brutally honest memoir by a woman who discovered at age 11 what it feels like to be noticed--not as a cute preteen but as an alluring sex object. From then on, Cohen sought out sexual partners--more than 40 of them over a dozen years. Growing up in northern New Jersey, Cohen and her best friends began hooking up with guys at friends' apartments in New York when their parents were out. When her mother entered medical school in the Philippines, all parental supervision seems to have gone--until her father returned to assume some of his duties. But, anxious to be cool with his daughters' friends, he smoked pot with them and encouraged their sexual pursuits. Cohen headed to Massachusetts for college, only a half day's drive from partners and pot in New York. Then, for the next 15 years and 225 pages, Cohen hops from place to place, always finding men to sleep with, desperate to feel loved, addicted to her power over men, losing herself in need. Cohen is not proud of her past--she says she is disgusted--but this memoir gives readers a forthright look at the addiction of promiscuity. Highly recommended.--Linda Beck, Indian Valley P.L., Telford, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The author probes her troubling relationship to sex. As a teen, Cohen, who wrote the young-adult novel Easy (2006), indiscriminately sought the sexual attention of men and boys her age in a desperate attempt to make up for the love her parents denied her. Figuring she slept with close to 40 partners before realizing "doing so was not serving [her] well," the author recounts in spare, incisive prose the many unfulfilling sexual exploits she enacted in a vain attempt to secure "proof of being loved." Looking back on those moments, her bald account brings to the fore the double standard between the sexes when it comes to promiscuity. "For a man this might be a pleasant trip down memory lane, counting up his conquests," she writes. "But for a girl, it's a whole other story. I had let these men inside me, wanting that to make me matter to them. Wanting it to make me matter." Cohen's training as a psychotherapist is clearly evident. She reveals an impressive analytic prowess as she exposes the damaging self-effacement that underlies the seeming assertion involved in attracting men to her and then driving them away. Though by the memoir's end she's changed course and entered into a long-term relationship that meets her needs, Cohen admits: "I've learned at this point there's no shot I can receive, no pill I can take, no therapy I can be a part of that will give me the resolve to do the things I need to do to be loved. It's a choice. A simple choice. I say I want intimacy. I say I want to be loved. But really, I'm petrified. The straight truth is, I don't know if I have it in me, and I'm scared to find out that I can't." Cohen's ultimate ownership of her issues leaves as much of an impression as her openness in putting them out there. An important look at the dynamics of female sexual power and promiscuity in general. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
