ou can’t be a woman, in any age – or at any age, and not contemplate your own existence and what makes you, you. What makes you whole. What it is that defines you. Sometimes you will find yourself deep in conversation with whom you think is the most exquisite, fascinating woman you have ever come across, and find that she too, like you perhaps, thinks of herself in in bits and pieces. A piece of her belongs to her mother. A sliver to lovers past. Siblings. Girlfriends. Her children. Everyone has a slice of this woman, and somewhere along the way, she herself has become lost within these connections.

Lisa Taddeo describes the experience of being a woman well. There may be times, when as the reader, you could find yourself wondering why all her subjects and characters live such theatrical lives, but then you realize that’s just Taddeo flexing her writer’s muscle. Behind all the words that follow each other most masterfully, are just stories you know you have found your own self in.

While her first book, Three Women, was a collection featuring real life narratives of three women, as the title suggests, her novel Animal, which followed a couple of years later was kind of in the same vein, but not the same league.

Where Three Women could make you understand, what as a woman, you have done for love, or whatever your definition of the word is, through the stories told there, Animal seemed like unnecessary self-harm. The women who were part of Three Women’s stories were so unaware of their own actions or motivations, you could understand exactly at which point their fiction and fantasy mingled, and why. Animal is a long, furious dream, with the protagonist (antagonist?) constantly punishing herself.

Lisa Taddeo describes the experience of being a woman well. There may be times, when as the reader, you could find yourself wondering why all her subjects and characters live such theatrical lives, but then you realize that’s just Taddeo flexing her writer’s muscle. Behind all the words that follow each other most masterfully, are just stories you know you have found your own self in. 

Taddeo explores the most significant relationship women have – that with other women, and in relation to other women – in Ghost Lover. A collection of nine short stories, she doesn’t have much space to meander, and must get to her point right away, which isn’t the exact problem with her writing anyway. Taddeo gets to the point, but like a pointillist, leaves the picture just fuzzy enough that you must draw your own conclusions. Does doing that make her a lazy writer? Does resenting it make us lazy readers? Please draw your own conclusions.

With Ghost Lover, even when the main relationship the female protagonist focuses on is with a man, in truth, she is still holding herself up against another woman. Whether it is someone she simply deems cooler or more successful, or is vying for the attentions of the same man with, or has been friends with for a long time, the character will measure her life and accomplishments against this other woman.

While slightly baffling at times in the turns she takes with her stories, Lisa Taddeo’s writings are essential reading for anyone trying to decipher women, or trying to fathom their own experience as one. The intimacy Taddeo explores in her works is sexual on the surface, but beneath the surface lie the real milestones and corners every woman is trying to reach: her own identity, divorced of all connections, and the sincerest love, which should first and most importantly be aimed at the self.