I mean yes I really liked the way it was written and the characters but I couldn't love it anyway. Here, she is initiated into an elite secret society, where she must learn to serve the sexual fantasies of Rene and his fellow members. maybe this is the reason why I didn't love the book. The classic French erotic bestseller that preceded Fifty Shades of Grey A beautiful young French woman, known only as O, is taken by her lover Rene to a splendid mansion near Paris. I'm not narrow-minded but I can't tolerate the idea of women being used and abused this way. I was also wondering why didn't she just leave Sir Stephen was it because of her love for Réne or because she loved what they was doing to her and how they were treating her? was it exciting for her? or maybe because she felt like she didn't deserve her freedom ? I just don't know. I could not understand weather O loved Réne or Sir Stephen, weather Réne loved her or not, weather she loved her freedom or her submission. more havior and how easy she was (you may say that I'm just a kid and those books should not be read by a kid but you must be ascertained that I'm an adult ). Truthfully during my reading at first I was schocked by O's be. I must apoliogize from the very beginning about my English (I studied English as an option in school so please don't judge me). Review 2: It's the first time in my whole life that I don't know how to describe my feelings about a book. Reage describes objects and instruments and postures in such a way it's hard to imagine them and how it must look like. It's also written in long, complicated sentences, which are anything but enjoyable. This repetitiveness makes this a very, very, very boring read.

Either way, Desclos' boldness proved the fairer sex, too, could write frankly and compellingly about sex.Review 1: Although the subject itself is very interesting (the different layers of psychology and sexuality) and the historic perspective the book is set against, the story itself is rather dull and very repetitive. Reactions to the bawdy depictions ranged from literary praise for its brilliantly rendered female perspective, a rarity in erotic novels, to those who accused the author of misogyny for scenes wherein the protagonist finds herself in compromising and sometimes violent sexual situations. With that, it caught the attention of government censors, who brought charges of obscenity against the publishers. In an attempt to impress her lover and presumably prove him wrong Desclos' published her prose under the pseudonym 'Pauline Réage' in 1954, and went onto win a major book award the following year.

Anne Desclos' lover, a fellow writer and admirer of Marquis de Sade, said it was not possible for a woman to write erotica as well as the famously racy, De Sade. The risque tale of a submissive female photographer was written on somewhat of a dare.

Passion is key to any novel that tends toward the erotic, and that's precisely what fuels The Story of O.

Story of o by pauline réage