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An incredibly honest and compulsively readable tale of a young woman's addiction to sex

About the Author

Kerry Cohen is a psychotherapist and writing teacher. She decided to write about her promiscuous past after seeing how many teenage girls she worked with shared her adolescent sex experiences but felt they couldn't talk about it. Born in 1970 in New Jersey, Kerry now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two sons.

Reviews

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) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

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 Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.