Story of O by Pauline Reage Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Story of O
Book Review: All depends
Summary: 1 Stars
This little 'review' is written after only having read the two first chapters. The book is just 'too much' for me. After having get her 'addicted' to cruel sex games in the castle (first chapter), where she gets beaten up until she bleeds and cries after her 'lovers' leave the room in addition to being unable to keep her urine up because of severe kidney damage caused during the 'love' games, she loses all sense of selfworth and selfesteem in the second chapter, where she starts getting so 'messed up' that she tells her lover "I love you, please make of me what you want but please don't leave me, my God, please don't leave me". I just wonder which real woman who loves herself could ever fall so low to be willing to give up everything and most importantly herself for her 'lover' who prostitutes her.
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In brief, i'm quite disgusted after the first two chapters. This is not about love or sex on the edge, but about psychological and emotional rape. Although one can say she does it all out of free will, it feels as if they made her 'addicted' to it in the first place.
Definitively not for the paint of heart.
Book Review: Almost Tame By Today's Standards
Summary: 2 Stars
It is hard to believe in this day and age that O does what she does - giving herself so completely over to a lover. I am still not sure what her motivations were. The story is quite choppy and I can imagine that it was risqué when first published, but it is almost tame compared to what one can see online today.Book Review: An aberration
Summary: 1 Stars
This story is horrible, disgusting, filthy, dehumanizing. An aberration, a perfect depiction of evil. It's good for what it shows about what evil is and what evil cand do to a human soul.
I'm not one for censorship; let people think, write, read, do as they want when not in violation of the law or the rights of others, but also let people call things for what they are. And, as someone wrote on another review, if you have felt guilty for having wanted to subject another human being to any of these things, then you should feel guilty. Try to figure out where that comes from and address it. You are too precious to live like that. Don't let anything or anyone lead you to believe otherwise. "To deny the dignity of a human being is to deny the dignity of every human being."
Book Review: Another good book...
Summary: 1 Stars
(I said 1 star for T.S.O.O. because I haven't read it yet). But, I have been reading a true crime book called "Perfect Victim" by Christine McGuire. It is about the story of Colleen Stan. She was kidnapped by a married couple in the late 70's while hitchiking to California from Oregon. She was then kept as a slave in there home for the seven years before escaping. It has definetly been a hard book to put down! That is where I first heard of "The Story Of O". It was the husband's favorite movie. So I thought I would look into it. Maybe you might be interested in "Perfect Victim" too.Book Review: At once erotic, discomforting, and psychological, O's story is wonderful and thought provoking. Very highly recommended
Summary: 5 Stars
For love for her lover René, a young woman called O consents to be bound, humiliated, beaten and abused, marked, and prostituted. Trained at the château Roissy, graduated into her lover's personal care, and then gifted by René to an even more dominant master, O journeys through slavery--at first happy only to please her lover, O eventually becomes proud of her identity as a willing slave. Balancing scenes of O's slavery with introspection into O's evolving thought, desire, and motivation, The Story of O is at once erotic, discomforting, and psychological. I was deeply impressed by the balance between these factors, and found the book thought provoking and all together wonderful. Very highly recommended.
It's difficult to critique the actual text of a translated work because the author's words are necessarily rewritten by the translator. The minor euphemism in the language (like "back entrance" for anus) sometimes feel weak, as if the writer lacks confidence. But for both of these defects, the book reads as swift and as slick as water. Cutting backstory to a minimum and never apologizing for the content, Réage approaches her topic boldly. At only 200 pages, the book moves swiftly through the different phases of O's training and her life as a slave, and these episodes are rarely repetitive but instead evolve into different forms of service, ownership, and punishment. Quickly intriguing and entirely engrossing, this is a difficult book to put down.
The novel is formed from a tripartite of elements: the erotic, the discomforting, and the psychological. The narrative voice of O's submission maintains a certain distance and is almost cold. As a result, like O, taught to keep her mouth open and her knees apart, the text is open and bare--and this naked honesty achieves an excruciating eroticism. The details of O's slavery, her beating and her prostitution, push the boundaries of generally accepted sexuality and are discomforting even as they are arousing. And weaving constantly into both the erotic and the discomforting are explorations of O's mental state. As O's servitude evolves, so does her mind. Initially, O consents to slavery at the behest of her lover, and find joy only in her lover's approval of her submission. However, as she continues down her chosen path and her relationship with René changes, O becomes increasingly proud of her role as a willing slave.
It is this introspection that gives the book depth and makes it truly wonderful: not just erotic, The Story of O is also psychological, an exploration of one woman's choice to become a slave. O's submissive role is not innate, it is learned. She becomes content. She discovers pride in her own debasement. O's story of submission is her own, and in Réage's voice is unapologetic--not all readers may agree with what O does. But O's motivations are real, as is the growth that she goes through as she continues along the path that she has chosen. It is rare to see a book that can so fully consume and combine both the body and the mind, but The Story of O does this precisely--for O, and perhaps also for the reader. The short book is quickly over, but it will remain in the reader's thoughts for a long time after as he comprehends and judges O's life. I expect that I will reread this book, and so I'm happy that I bought it. It is a brilliant example of its type--the philosophical erotic novel--and I very highly recommend it to all readers.
(On a side note: my biggest complaint about this book lies outside of the text itself, but rather with the mystery that surrounds it: the identities of the long-unknown author, the publishing editor, and this translator, as well as the editor's two-line conclusion to the book. Some online searches on The Story of O help clear up this mystery, but on the whole I find it only distracts from the book. I wish I had--and I recommend that other readers do--skip the various introductions to the Ballantine edition and concentrate instead on the text of the novel itself.)