Sex Lives of Australian Women is a compulsive read. It contains page after page of information about the sexual lives of thousands of women who participated in an anonymous survey. Divided into sections based around the questions posed, we learn about women’s orgasms, masturbation, relationship to pornography, sexual preferences and their affairs. The information is mostly anecdotal but there are statistics to support the personal disclosures. The women are identified by their age, occupation and the state in which they live. Differences between women are normalised by the sheer number and repetitive nature of the entries. Editor Joan Sauers has done a fine job gathering a representative selection of anecdotes, but occasionally her authorial voice passes judgement a little heavyhandedly. ‘Frankly,’ Sauers suggests at one point. ‘I think a lot of us would be more sane if we had more sex more often.’ It is this kind of intrusive opiniongiving that jars the reader out of an otherwise almost hypnotic liturgy of sexual confession. Despite this, the book is as fascinating as Sauers’ previous book Sex Lives of Australian Teenagers and will be essential reading for researchers, students and women interested in sexual politics.

Krissy Kneen is a writer, bookseller and marketing manager at Avid Reader

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