W: Three Women is a book that has created quite a buzz already, a lot of people
talking about it. There's something I suppose slightly strange about me as a
man talking to you about this book which is very much about three women and about
female desire but I wanted if we could to kind of go back to you creating this
book. It's taken you eight years, lots of conversations with these women but you
didn't know it was going to end up being about female desire when you first started.
LT: I wanted to talk to men and I did but I never wanted it... it started
with this notion of following the path of Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife
which was taking the pulse of sexuality in the late 70s and early 80s and there
was a lot of sex in it and it was very immersive. I was very admiring of
both aspects, the immersiveness in particular, because he spent about a
decade on it as well and immersed himself very much. But what I was
more interested in that I didn't find there was the emotion behind the acts.
It felt very act oriented and I was wondering you know for example in
swinging situations where a woman and her partner, where the woman would watch
her partner having sex with other men and vice versa I was interested in how
that would make someone feel.
W: You've mentioned the idea of the swinging, so
that's Sloane who's one of the three women that you speak about. Let's
look at Sloane because that relationship with her husband who is a chef and it's
kind of at his insistence it's his idea that she sleep with other men and one
line that seemed particularly telling to to me which is actually near the end of
her story when she's confronted by the wife of somebody that she slept with, and
she says you were the woman who had the power or you had the control
and I thought she didn't though because I was worried that she wasn't
ever really in control or having the power because it was her husband. Is that a
fair assessment or how would you feel after having spent so much time with her.
LT: I mean I don't think anything's an unfair assessment but
I mean everyone has their own takes and I like to hear different takes.
what I thought, you know a lot of people, let me just segue for a moment,
a lot of people said to me that why didn't you want to feature any happy
marriages. And so you know one reason is because a happy marriage is kind of
boring, it's not very narratively compelling. Yes there's little nuance
things that haven't, but Sloane's marriage was two things: one, a very happy
marriage genuinely, and two, an aberrant one. And I think you know it's aberrant
from the traditional doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it but I was
compelled to hear more about it. And the same thing that I'd you know heard in
Mr. Talese's book, the swinging aspect, but the the lack of the sort of depth of
it was what I was so excited to hear about from Sloane. And you know
secondarily I do think she had a lot of power she was confused about her place
in the world because of the way that women judge each other. She was confused
because she didn't always like the men that her husband chose. At the same time
if she had said I don't want to do that he wouldn't have said you have to or I'm
not happy at all. But she did it to please him and she talked about how much
he did to please her and how he said to her everyday that you are my fantasy. And
I think that I mean I don't think there's a person in the world who
wouldn't want their partner to think that they're their sexual fantasy. So you
know, so yes I do think she had the power and I think she thought she had the
power too and when the woman said that to her it was a sort of like, it was
chilling because she kind of realized that she could have taken...
she could have said, you know she did have agency, she was the star of
the show. But she also was afraid of the men being found out so it was two things
going on and with her it was always this confusion of of always having been
raised to be perfect at everything, at riding horses and modelling and now all of a
sudden she had to be perfect in the bedroom and perfect with how this woman
was going to you know feel after she found out.
W: Sloane is obviously not her real name but there is a name in there, the story
of Maggie is something that you can look up online because it was part of a
court case. So Maggie and her teacher Aaron Knodel that court case ended
up with him being cleared effectively. So did you feel that this book and
telling her story was an opportunity to, well, I say tell the truth
because there's no doubting what she says. Was that a huge
responsibility to kind of get that part across?
LT: What I wanted to do was not so much say this is terrible this is what he did and this is the truth.
I wanted to tell Maggie's version and in detail because I think that detail, the fact
that the detail had not happened in the trial, the fact that detail rarely comes
out in trials and when people are wrongfully convicted or wrongfully
acquitted - and I'm not saying that one or the other happened - but I do think
that the nuance is so important to any she said/he said or she said/she said etc
W: Lina completes our trio of women who is someone who is
stuck in a pretty sort of loveless marriage, certainly a sexless marriage,
and therefore does that classic thing of hooking up with somebody through
social media, finds the old college boyfriend. And again it felt to me as though she was
somebody who was never quite in control of that situation, it was always on his
terms and he's quite dismissive of her but she just is very happy to take what she can get.
LT: Lina, someone said something to me that is what I felt and I was
quite moved by it because she said, you know this woman journalist said to me,
you know I think Lina had the most agency in a sense of the three of them.
Because you know she wanted to do this, she said she was gonna leave
her husband after three months and then she did. She said if you don't touch me,
she didn't say that to him but she was like in her head three months and it
was like the day of the third month being up, she was,
I want a separation. And then the other thing she did was she wanted to
sleep with this man she wanted to feel those things that she had not ever felt
really and she you know the woman who said she had agency said you know
this woman who doesn't have a lot of money, you know was able to
pull babysitter's out of a hat, change
cars, you know make gasoline work, buy a charger in a gas station. Just like sort
of put all these things together to get this. And you know I think you know you
can look at it as pathetic, I don't. I think there's sad elements
obviously but there's also high passion and there's also probably more than
she'd experience in her whole life and might ever again.
W: There's no doubting the strength of the emotion and as you say the passion, the desire in all
three of these women even though they all have very different stories.
I think women reading the book I am sure will see that and they will recognize it
and relate to it and I wonder whether you see this is book as a book being for
female readers only or what you hope male readers might get out of it. Of
course I ask this as a male reader who got a huge amount from it.
LT: I like the question, a lot, and one of the early male readers who read it and I've said
this so many times but it was so vital and I'm so happy to hear it.
He said to me until I read your book I didn't realize how indifference could be
so wounding. And that to me was so striking and so wonderful because I
wanted to convey that. I think Lina wanted that more than anything: for him
to just understand that if he had just written one word back to her after two
weeks of waiting that she wouldn't have been in such agony. And I think that
that's, you know we are owed that when we are in an intimate relationship or a
business relationship with someone unless we've done
something terrible to the person we are owed the person saying hey, I've seen
your email, I've seen your text message, I will get back to you but I see you and
that's, you know. So the indifference of that I hope that men or whoever is the
sort of you know alpha person in the relationship because it could be anyone
to say, you know, indifference is cruel. And just being able to pick up whenever
you want... I always think of you know men mostly who don't call or write
to a woman after weeks and then you know one day at like 11:00 p.m. it's like 'U up?'
And I always think about that. And I was talking to my friend the other night she
was like I had that happen at midnight and I waited one minute and at 00.01
I was like 'Yeah, where are you?' And there's also that part in Fleabag
when like you know the guy says to her, he's like you know are you
basically are you up and she's like oh yeah I was just coming home from the bar.
She's like you know clearly at home
she like goes up like dresses herself up and that's...
it's funny because it's true.
W: I feel as though there's kind of a
bit of a Golden Age of female nonfiction writing at the moment because of the
honesty with which you're writing but I realized that of course especially with
your book that it is only possible probably for these three women to have
shared so many details of their personal lives with another woman. Do you think it
would only have been possible that way around?
LT: I do, because I think that with
any, when two heterosexual or two homosexual people or people of a gender
that would like the other gender in anyway - I think that there's, like
with many of the men I spoke to there was definitely an ego on their part,
including my own brother, it doesn't have to be, you know because I spoke to him
for the book at one point. It was an ill-advised decision. Because now he still tells me things
like as though I'm reporting on him. So we need to get out of that, maybe he'll
watch this. No I'm just kidding. Not. But yeah so I think that there's that
going on that is you know it's easier to talk to someone of the same
gender, that you're not trying to kind of...
there's that element of bravado is not there. And a corollary to that is that my
fact-checker on the book was a gay man. And, you know, he found it...
I asked the women is it okay that it's a man, that I said you know it's a
gay man, so they were like yeah totally. But I also, you know Sloane
for example was like he talked to her for hours about just you
know he got a kick out of it. And I do wonder if it were a heterosexual
man if she had been more... like I think that she was more naturally you know
So I just, I do think it depends. I think for the purposes of I
think Sloane would have probably told a gay man more. So I just think
but yes, with the other two I think that a woman's the only way it would have worked.
W: Well, whether you're a female reader or a male reader I think there's
just so much to get from this book so Lisa thank you so much for spending
eight years writing it.
LT: Thank you for having me.