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Anaïs: The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin
A candid biography provides a look at the mysterious woman known for her sexual exploits and scandalous affairs, revealing the truth about her famous diaries and uninhibited private life
528 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1993
33 people are currently reading
1397 people want to read
About the author
Noël Riley Fitch
23 books38 followersNoël Riley Fitch is a biographer and historian of expatriate intellectuals in Paris in the first half of the 20th century. Every book Fitch has written has some connection with Paris and the artists who lived and worked there, including her biographies of Sylvia Beach, Anaïs Nin, and Julia Child.
In June 2011 Noël was awarded the prestigious Prix de la Tour Montparnasse literary award in France for the French translation of hers widely acclaimed 1983 book ‘Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation’. Her book Appetite for Life The Biography of Julia Child was written with Mrs. Child’s full cooperation and exclusive authorization. Publishers Weekly said the book is written 'warmly and compellingly’, and Kirkus Reviews called its details “exquisite” and the story “exhaustively researched, and charming.” Entertainment Weekly also named it number five of the ten best books of the year.
Noël recently retired from teaching writing and literature courses for the University of Southern California and the American University in Paris. She lives with her husband in Los Angeles, Paris, and New York City.
In June 2011 Noël was awarded the prestigious Prix de la Tour Montparnasse literary award in France for the French translation of hers widely acclaimed 1983 book ‘Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation’. Her book Appetite for Life The Biography of Julia Child was written with Mrs. Child’s full cooperation and exclusive authorization. Publishers Weekly said the book is written 'warmly and compellingly’, and Kirkus Reviews called its details “exquisite” and the story “exhaustively researched, and charming.” Entertainment Weekly also named it number five of the ten best books of the year.
Noël recently retired from teaching writing and literature courses for the University of Southern California and the American University in Paris. She lives with her husband in Los Angeles, Paris, and New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
July 23, 2022
The most amazing transformation of Nin in this book was not the effect she had on women in her writings of liberation but that she refused to have sex with her first husband for one year after the wedding. But boy after that her sex appetites were ravenous which including having sex with 3 different men in one day and her father too but never had an orgasm.
She committed bigamy, took meth and LSD and was an invertebrate liar as her diaries proved. Not the kind of woman that I would befriend but do wish I could have seen one of her on-campus speeches as her talks seem to be very uplifting to the human spirit.
She committed bigamy, took meth and LSD and was an invertebrate liar as her diaries proved. Not the kind of woman that I would befriend but do wish I could have seen one of her on-campus speeches as her talks seem to be very uplifting to the human spirit.
September 15, 2017
First things first: this is a biography written in the present tense. I struggle sometimes with this affectation in fiction, but it feels particularly inappropriate in a biography of a subject whose life in her own writings was constructed, edited and reconstructed with hindsight and a view towards an audience.
Riley Fitch admits and foregrounds the extent to which Anais Nin was almost a character in her own life, but is so in love with her own subject that I finished this book and wanted to read another person's view of Nin immediately. She left volumes of diaries, of course, as well as her fiction, much of which drew on her own experiences. This book does give us some of the background to reading Nin's own works, and is useful in that respect, but it reflects back the Nin who Nin herself wanted us to see.
Anais Nin is one of those controversial female writers (Simone de Beauvoir, for example, despised her model of femininity) who seems to oscillate between being the victim and agent of her own gender and sexuality: abused victim of paternal incest or woman who can't meet a man without falling into his bed? A woman liberated from the strictures of patriarchy or one neurotically striving to be the perfect wife?
So would I recommend this? It's useful on clarifying the background to Nin's diaries and fiction, but for anyone wanting to experience Nin it doesn't replace a direct reading of her writings.
3.5 stars as it oscillates between the irritating and the interesting.
Riley Fitch admits and foregrounds the extent to which Anais Nin was almost a character in her own life, but is so in love with her own subject that I finished this book and wanted to read another person's view of Nin immediately. She left volumes of diaries, of course, as well as her fiction, much of which drew on her own experiences. This book does give us some of the background to reading Nin's own works, and is useful in that respect, but it reflects back the Nin who Nin herself wanted us to see.
Anais Nin is one of those controversial female writers (Simone de Beauvoir, for example, despised her model of femininity) who seems to oscillate between being the victim and agent of her own gender and sexuality: abused victim of paternal incest or woman who can't meet a man without falling into his bed? A woman liberated from the strictures of patriarchy or one neurotically striving to be the perfect wife?
So would I recommend this? It's useful on clarifying the background to Nin's diaries and fiction, but for anyone wanting to experience Nin it doesn't replace a direct reading of her writings.
3.5 stars as it oscillates between the irritating and the interesting.
March 4, 2023
Reading this was an exhausting experience.
January 22, 2023
It must have been about forty years since I ‘read' any Nin. I say ‘read’ because I was a callow youth and was reading ‘Delta of Venus’ for the ‘dirty bits’ or as I might more kindly term it nowadays ‘sleaze’. That was my entire Nin experience until this book which I picked up (£2) because its index listed Harry and Caresse Crosby (Back Sun Press) next to Aleister Crowley as well as Bebe and Louis Barron (the composers of the music 'Forbidden Planet') and Jack ('On the Road’) Kerouac. What an odd mix I thought. Is she one of those people who act as ‘social glue’ linking everybody to everybody else?
Now I know a lot more about her, and my feelings swing between sympathy for her obvious fucked-upness, irritation at her lying and a (somewhat begrudging) admiration for her principles of seeking imagination over ‘reality’ in her writing although bear in mind my opinion of the latter is by the osmosis of this book.
Nin is now probably best known for her love-life (we’ll get to that) and her diaries which covered some fifty years and 200 volumes and which were revised/amended/censored as time went by. The latter also formed the basis of much of her fiction.
Fitch has seemingly accessed most of these in all their versions and thus reveals many facets of Nin’s life that were largely and deliberately hidden from her public. Nin saw her diaries as partly fictional and this is part of the biographical problem. What IS the truth? Fitch has conducted extensive interviews with many who knew her and seems to have pieced together enough to have a decent stab at it. It certainly made sense to me.
Nin was sexually abused by her father and she was separated from him when her mother left him to live in the US. The young Nin seemingly repressed this and instead sought to romanticise/emulate/please him so much so that she later had short-lived sexual relationship with him in her thirties. This is mind-boggling nowadays but at the time ideas around sexual abuse victims were scarcely conceived of, especially in Freudian analysis which was all the rage then. Nin would spend years in analysis, most notably with ex-Freud disciple Otto Rank who Nin also saw as a (hello!) father figure and would also have a sexual relationship with- doctor/patient professionalism also in short supply it seems. This is in addition to a husband (who she DIDN’T have sex with for at least a year after their marriage) alongside an ongoing relationship with Henry Miller who she WAS sleeping with along with a (possible) bi-curious situation with Miller's wife. It doesn't seem very liberated or fun, more exploitative and fucked-up.
Nin’s husband, who was very rich (and old enough to be a - hello!- father-figure) was (very probably) aware of all this and turned a blind eye. One has to question (Fitch doesn’t) what his own sexual life might have been at this time. He does seem to have been remarkably accommodating, especially in Nin’s later life when she becomes involved with another man and splits her life (and her friendships) between the east and west coasts of America. This is so successfully done that she can bigamously marry the other lover and few friends on either coast are aware of the secret. She often contemplates leaving her first husband but doesn’t because she gets a whopping allowance from him. Funny that.
The public is kept unaware of this and to them, she presents herself as an (independent) artist struggling on and writing her short stories and novels ‘baring her protagonist's souls' in a high modernist/symbolic manner which, for a while at least, gain little public recognition. However, she did gather some acolytes (often young gay men she could nurture/mother- funny that) who she would ruthlessly dump if they were too critical- funny that. But, for those she liked, she would be hugely supportive and loyal and do her best to promote and they in their turn would promote her. Much as I want to dislike Nin I cannot help but admire her for this.
It is too tedious for me to relate more of her history, google it, but I felt that she was both manipulated and later manipulator, the classic poacher turned gamekeeper, hence my ambivalence towards her. Equally, she is such a freak (she was loved by many of the hippy movement but she personally loathed them for their perceived dirtiness and loose morals) that I assume many of these people she became involved with must have had some sense of who they getting involved with.
The book held interest for me because of her links between Paris of the 20s and California of the 60s and Fitch does well in evoking this. Nin really did seem to have crossed paths with so many interesting people and Fitch does very well to cram them all in without it being just a list of names. For those with counter-cultural tastes, these include film-makers Kenneth Anger (she appears in his film ‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome’), Robert Wise, director of, among other things, ‘The Haunting’ to Antonin Artaud (who she might have had an affair with), Max Jacobson, the original ‘Dr. Feelgood’ who shot up celebrity patients with amphetamines and monkey gland extract, and Alan Ginsburg who she inspired to (sigh, not again!) take all his clothes off. I imagine to those of you who have a greater awareness of Nin's work this book will be excellent but even without it (as I am) I found a thought-provoking read and it definitely put a few new people on my cultural radar.
Now I know a lot more about her, and my feelings swing between sympathy for her obvious fucked-upness, irritation at her lying and a (somewhat begrudging) admiration for her principles of seeking imagination over ‘reality’ in her writing although bear in mind my opinion of the latter is by the osmosis of this book.
Nin is now probably best known for her love-life (we’ll get to that) and her diaries which covered some fifty years and 200 volumes and which were revised/amended/censored as time went by. The latter also formed the basis of much of her fiction.
Fitch has seemingly accessed most of these in all their versions and thus reveals many facets of Nin’s life that were largely and deliberately hidden from her public. Nin saw her diaries as partly fictional and this is part of the biographical problem. What IS the truth? Fitch has conducted extensive interviews with many who knew her and seems to have pieced together enough to have a decent stab at it. It certainly made sense to me.
Nin was sexually abused by her father and she was separated from him when her mother left him to live in the US. The young Nin seemingly repressed this and instead sought to romanticise/emulate/please him so much so that she later had short-lived sexual relationship with him in her thirties. This is mind-boggling nowadays but at the time ideas around sexual abuse victims were scarcely conceived of, especially in Freudian analysis which was all the rage then. Nin would spend years in analysis, most notably with ex-Freud disciple Otto Rank who Nin also saw as a (hello!) father figure and would also have a sexual relationship with- doctor/patient professionalism also in short supply it seems. This is in addition to a husband (who she DIDN’T have sex with for at least a year after their marriage) alongside an ongoing relationship with Henry Miller who she WAS sleeping with along with a (possible) bi-curious situation with Miller's wife. It doesn't seem very liberated or fun, more exploitative and fucked-up.
Nin’s husband, who was very rich (and old enough to be a - hello!- father-figure) was (very probably) aware of all this and turned a blind eye. One has to question (Fitch doesn’t) what his own sexual life might have been at this time. He does seem to have been remarkably accommodating, especially in Nin’s later life when she becomes involved with another man and splits her life (and her friendships) between the east and west coasts of America. This is so successfully done that she can bigamously marry the other lover and few friends on either coast are aware of the secret. She often contemplates leaving her first husband but doesn’t because she gets a whopping allowance from him. Funny that.
The public is kept unaware of this and to them, she presents herself as an (independent) artist struggling on and writing her short stories and novels ‘baring her protagonist's souls' in a high modernist/symbolic manner which, for a while at least, gain little public recognition. However, she did gather some acolytes (often young gay men she could nurture/mother- funny that) who she would ruthlessly dump if they were too critical- funny that. But, for those she liked, she would be hugely supportive and loyal and do her best to promote and they in their turn would promote her. Much as I want to dislike Nin I cannot help but admire her for this.
It is too tedious for me to relate more of her history, google it, but I felt that she was both manipulated and later manipulator, the classic poacher turned gamekeeper, hence my ambivalence towards her. Equally, she is such a freak (she was loved by many of the hippy movement but she personally loathed them for their perceived dirtiness and loose morals) that I assume many of these people she became involved with must have had some sense of who they getting involved with.
The book held interest for me because of her links between Paris of the 20s and California of the 60s and Fitch does well in evoking this. Nin really did seem to have crossed paths with so many interesting people and Fitch does very well to cram them all in without it being just a list of names. For those with counter-cultural tastes, these include film-makers Kenneth Anger (she appears in his film ‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome’), Robert Wise, director of, among other things, ‘The Haunting’ to Antonin Artaud (who she might have had an affair with), Max Jacobson, the original ‘Dr. Feelgood’ who shot up celebrity patients with amphetamines and monkey gland extract, and Alan Ginsburg who she inspired to (sigh, not again!) take all his clothes off. I imagine to those of you who have a greater awareness of Nin's work this book will be excellent but even without it (as I am) I found a thought-provoking read and it definitely put a few new people on my cultural radar.
November 22, 2021
It seems carefully researched. However, I can't imagine how the author made such tedious reading out of Nin's sex life.
April 7, 2022
A well researched biography and a difficult task at that, considering the layers of fiction within the subject herself. Anais portrays a paradoxical character in her own life and her self edited diaries reflect the construct she has built around herself; one full of deception and compartmentalising.
The writing itself was a tad bland and flat, considering the subject matter. It became tedious and clunky at times as Fitch stitched a patchwork of a life into a readable account.
The writing itself was a tad bland and flat, considering the subject matter. It became tedious and clunky at times as Fitch stitched a patchwork of a life into a readable account.
October 22, 2013
Anais Nin is a fascinating woman, and this book is a solid survey of her life. And what a life Fitch tells us about. Nin, born in the early years of the 20th century, recorded almost all of her experiences and thoughts from the age of 11 in 35,000 pages of diaries until she passed in 1977. In those pages she traced love affairs, literary failures and achievements, her incestuous affair with her own father when she was an adult, her experiences as both a therapist and a patient when Freudian analysis was dominant, her bicoastal bigamy when she had one husband in NYC and one in California, neither knowing of the other for decades, and her eventual arrival as a celebrity in the last decade of her life.
So why only three stars? Because despite the dramatic material, there is very little drama to the prose. It is far too academic at times, but lacks the poetry and the passion that Nin deserves, as well as a sense of staging. There is instead a sense of cramming, of listing in great detail all the people Anais knew, rather than spending more time with deeper discussion of fewer. One example--Anais was surrounded from about 1940 on by a coterie of much younger gay men. There was a bit of the "Judy Garland" effect going on. But instead of focusing on the four or five most important, the author gives a bit about each young man. And fails to really explain the pattern effectively. It would be interesting to learn more about how someone who was, by our standards, quite anti-gay in many of her attitudes, could persist in these lengthy and sometimes intimate friendships.
That said, the book does make some important observations. The author convinced me that Nin was a victim of her father's sexual abuse before the age of 11, and that this abuse lingered in its effects throughout Nin's life, leading to her eventual seduction of/by her father after 19 years of separation. It also explains how she went from a sexually repressed, unconsumated 2 years of Catholic marriage to a remarkably active sex life (trying to avoid the pejorative term "promiscuous"). Her list of lovers is stunningly long, with some famous literary figures among them, including Edmund Wilson, Henry Miller, and Antonin Artaud, who was much more known for his homosexual liaisons.
Much more important is her literary output. And here, as has long been known, we find that every novel and short story was ripped from her diary, occasionally altered in various details, but always based on fact. And yet--the diaries were constantly altered, sometimes to protect her first husband from her affairs, other times to change reality for Nin's own ego. When finally published, they were heavily edited, with all sex removed, and many other facts omitted.
So we are left with an enigma, a woman who became a feminist icon of sorts, who lied to her public about supporting herself, hid BOTH her husbands from that public, when it was in fact those two men, particularly the first, who supported her financially (and emotionally) for almost her entire life.
Anais Nin--riveting and talented and seductive--led a life that most women her age could only dream of. She was relentlessly self-made, and self-remade.
Oh, forgot to note one other disappointment--I've seldom seen a major press biography with a more pathetic collection of photos of the main subject. When you google Nin, you come across all kinds of unbelievable images of her in her prime, some with Miller. This book, you barely see her face in most of the pics, and the two of Miller show him at a distance. You don't see either of her husbands very well except late in life.
So why only three stars? Because despite the dramatic material, there is very little drama to the prose. It is far too academic at times, but lacks the poetry and the passion that Nin deserves, as well as a sense of staging. There is instead a sense of cramming, of listing in great detail all the people Anais knew, rather than spending more time with deeper discussion of fewer. One example--Anais was surrounded from about 1940 on by a coterie of much younger gay men. There was a bit of the "Judy Garland" effect going on. But instead of focusing on the four or five most important, the author gives a bit about each young man. And fails to really explain the pattern effectively. It would be interesting to learn more about how someone who was, by our standards, quite anti-gay in many of her attitudes, could persist in these lengthy and sometimes intimate friendships.
That said, the book does make some important observations. The author convinced me that Nin was a victim of her father's sexual abuse before the age of 11, and that this abuse lingered in its effects throughout Nin's life, leading to her eventual seduction of/by her father after 19 years of separation. It also explains how she went from a sexually repressed, unconsumated 2 years of Catholic marriage to a remarkably active sex life (trying to avoid the pejorative term "promiscuous"). Her list of lovers is stunningly long, with some famous literary figures among them, including Edmund Wilson, Henry Miller, and Antonin Artaud, who was much more known for his homosexual liaisons.
Much more important is her literary output. And here, as has long been known, we find that every novel and short story was ripped from her diary, occasionally altered in various details, but always based on fact. And yet--the diaries were constantly altered, sometimes to protect her first husband from her affairs, other times to change reality for Nin's own ego. When finally published, they were heavily edited, with all sex removed, and many other facts omitted.
So we are left with an enigma, a woman who became a feminist icon of sorts, who lied to her public about supporting herself, hid BOTH her husbands from that public, when it was in fact those two men, particularly the first, who supported her financially (and emotionally) for almost her entire life.
Anais Nin--riveting and talented and seductive--led a life that most women her age could only dream of. She was relentlessly self-made, and self-remade.
Oh, forgot to note one other disappointment--I've seldom seen a major press biography with a more pathetic collection of photos of the main subject. When you google Nin, you come across all kinds of unbelievable images of her in her prime, some with Miller. This book, you barely see her face in most of the pics, and the two of Miller show him at a distance. You don't see either of her husbands very well except late in life.
June 16, 2019
The best biography of Nin. Fitch captures the essence of Anais Nin in a way that other biographers miss. Thoroughly researched and impartial, Fitch strives for a portrait that is true to Nin’s complex personality. Following the publication of the unexpurgated diaries (it was Nin’s wish that they be published after her death and the death of Hugh) many of her followers who had pictured her as she appeared in the expurgated version—an independent woman of the world—were disenchanted and denounced her “lies”. Anais never denied falsehoods which she described as fantasies rather than lies and the diary in both versions is a work of artifice rather than a factual picture of Nin’s life. It seems true that she enjoyed deception as it gave her a feeling of excitement and power. Beneath her seeming confidence, there was a lot of fear. Henry Miller wisely accused her of helping others to bind them to her. Nin was generous with gifts—though her finances were due to Hugh’s career as a banker—but she could not abide criticism and some of her close friendships faltered when friends chose to be frank about her work. In her later years, she achieved a following especially of younger women who elevated her to the level of a goddess and Nin enjoyed this status after decades of being ignored by the literary community. Despite what one thinks of Nin’s narcissism (of which she accused herself, but never seemed to be able to ameliorate) she was an original personality and her diaries will vie with such acclaimed diarists as Pepys and Woolf
December 31, 2012
Well this is one of the most erotic novel I have ever read. And also the author has the most weirdly twisted chilhood. I dont know exactly which book I read coz on the book it was written "wanderings".
The book was about her childhood. Most weird childhood I would say..........................and also most erotic. It was written in such a simple language. Sure, SEX seems such a delightful activity in this book. Anna took so much pleasure and relish in the activity. But its all wrong. There is no conscience in the book. Its just all sex sex and sex.
Anna's life is simply a porn for the readers. There seemd to be no moral in Anna. She just want sex love sex and like to have sex with absolutely everyone. Craziest woman writer. At first it was okay. She was doing Del and Paco, her step brother but then she started doing it with her father. It was really very very sick.
I gave it 3 stars just because it is absolutely erotic and you can visualize almost everything.
(I am still not sure I read this book or not. Might be entirely another book. But it was about Anna's erotic life so I simply rated this)
The book was about her childhood. Most weird childhood I would say..........................and also most erotic. It was written in such a simple language. Sure, SEX seems such a delightful activity in this book. Anna took so much pleasure and relish in the activity. But its all wrong. There is no conscience in the book. Its just all sex sex and sex.
Anna's life is simply a porn for the readers. There seemd to be no moral in Anna. She just want sex love sex and like to have sex with absolutely everyone. Craziest woman writer. At first it was okay. She was doing Del and Paco, her step brother but then she started doing it with her father. It was really very very sick.
I gave it 3 stars just because it is absolutely erotic and you can visualize almost everything.
(I am still not sure I read this book or not. Might be entirely another book. But it was about Anna's erotic life so I simply rated this)
Currently reading
November 15, 2009Was talking to a friend about Nin's diaries, which I read in their entirety when I was in my 20's, and influenced me profoundly. I started keeping a journal when I was 17 and still do, but since Nin's dairies had been so heavily edited, I kept all the sex an drugs out of mine too (most of the rock'n'roll as well, because it had so much sex and drugs in it). Then, when the unexpurgated diaries came out, we were all floored, so I'm reading an overview of the truth. I plan on re-reading the unedited diaries beginning Jan. 2010 (after I finish UNDER THE DOME).
April 5, 2013
I'm finding this really hard going. For a woman who was fascinating, the author certainly makes it an incredibly dry story. I'd like to just put it down and not bother picking it back up, as I'm over halfway through, but part of me still holds out hope that it will get better - the dreamer I me, I think!
June 5, 2007
It took me a long long time to finish this book. Fitch's account of Nin's life isn't nearly as interesting as Nin's own, but it does fill in a lot of the gaps that were edited out of the diaries.
November 10, 2008
The most easy to read biography I have read yet. Also included much more information than just reading her diaries and has influenced me to read the all again along with her short stories.
March 17, 2025
i am maybe part of the “low culture” in that my exposure to henry miller (anaïs longtime lover and creative partner)’s Tropic of Cancer is the episode of seinfeld where George has to pay for the copy he stole from Jerry.
that aside , i was the perfect audience for this book. i understand how some could criticize this for its present tense narrative, its proliferation of names, places, and assumptions, but i feel that author Noelle Reilly Fitch really knocks it out of the part.
somehow, she tells both stories- the one that anaïs crafted, the ones she told her friends, and the one we know (from primary sources) that she lived. it handles this multitude of tones very well, despite clearly having more define evidence towards the end of her life (since people knowing her could still be interviewed at time of writing). some notes i wrote while reading
- hugo guiler the ultimate wife guy
- she’s iconic because she let a literal couch sitting good for nothing commie live on her houseboat RENT FREE
- nose job
- this would make the “ethical non monogamy” crowd quake. non monogamy but make it not ethical and full of secrets
most surprising famous people that she met or interacted with: Ram Dass, Timothy Leary, Christopher Isherwood
that aside , i was the perfect audience for this book. i understand how some could criticize this for its present tense narrative, its proliferation of names, places, and assumptions, but i feel that author Noelle Reilly Fitch really knocks it out of the part.
somehow, she tells both stories- the one that anaïs crafted, the ones she told her friends, and the one we know (from primary sources) that she lived. it handles this multitude of tones very well, despite clearly having more define evidence towards the end of her life (since people knowing her could still be interviewed at time of writing). some notes i wrote while reading
- hugo guiler the ultimate wife guy
- she’s iconic because she let a literal couch sitting good for nothing commie live on her houseboat RENT FREE
- nose job
- this would make the “ethical non monogamy” crowd quake. non monogamy but make it not ethical and full of secrets
most surprising famous people that she met or interacted with: Ram Dass, Timothy Leary, Christopher Isherwood
May 30, 2024
This book is definitely for serious fans of Nin, and perhaps Henry Miller too. The detailed analysis must have taken ages, in particular as Nin's papers and writing are in various archives, and those who knew her only knew the aspects of her life she chose to share. She was never truly open with anyone about the complexity of her relationships or family connections. As a young woman (teens and twenties) I was a huge fan of Anais Nin's writing and read everything I could get my hands on, but it wasn't until I was in my thirties that I began to realize the signs of psychological manipulations and seductions that were likely based in various traumas in her life. So, I appreciate this analysis, and recommend to those who are open to the more academic style of writing and perhaps like a little realism rubbed into their literary mythos.
August 26, 2024
Unfortunately, this is only one of two authoritative and comprehensive biographies we have of Anais Nin. While I greatly appreciate the author's genuinely unbiased and objective writing, the actual substance of the biography remains thin. If you have read Nin's diary cycle, very little will be new information here. Additionally, the author's stylistic choice of mixing present and past tense makes for a very clunky and incoherent read. At the time of publication (1993), I could see how it would have been nice to have a more straightforward narrative of Nin's life, but has no place on the shelves of modern readers.
February 11, 2020
A well researched account of the life of the talented and notorious writer Anaïs Nin!
June 2, 2020
A tedious account. It took forever to finish it and I was relieved when I finally did.
July 23, 2017
I have mixed reactions to this book. Packed with info and research available up to the publication in 1993. Some of the writing was dry and at times it felt like "work" to read this book, but glad I did . I found interesting the later chapters of the book and the support she gave to young writers, but often support or advice which she did not follow for herself! She was a hypocrite. It was revealing of many truths in Nin's life which she lied about. As a young woman I liked Nin and even corresponded with her. It was disappointing but revealing to learn of the truths of her life. I now question some of her mental stability at points as well as her father's. Informative about the relationship with her mother.
Amazed at the amount of writing she accomplished.
Amazed at the amount of writing she accomplished.
November 22, 2021
I don’t often abandon a book half way through, but I just couldn’t finish this. It is basically a running tally of who Anais Nin had sex with. Her early childhood and the obvious sexual abuse by her father was informative, but I was hoping for more on her writing and growth as a writer. I read her ‘D.H.Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study’, and was always a fan of her ‘Letter to the Collector’. Both are good work. I wanted to better understand this woman. This book didn’t do that for me.
April 30, 2009
I have always had this curiosity about what made Anais Nin tick. I'm still not sure if I know what her tick. Did anyone know, even Anais herself, know what made her tick? Did anyone know Anais? Which Anais? I'm still confused, however, the book did shed much light on her life, especially her early which interested me. Well written, well researched, well documented.
February 11, 2008
i've read anais nin's work since i was younger and it is interesting how she weaved a certain web throughout her storytelling and lovers so much so that you never really knew what was fact vs. fiction. this book tries to demystify her and i think succeeds pretty well.
January 28, 2008
I can't deeal with this book. Anais Nin and all her lovers, her hysterics, her twisted fantasties, it all got to be a bit much so I had to abandon it.
February 24, 2008
better than the deirdre bair biography, which focused too much on nin's morality.
March 5, 2008
I really liked this angle
June 24, 2012
I just started reading this book and am so excited. I love her books and am just as enthralled with her life.
Read
January 16, 2011LOVED it!!
December 29, 2012
I lived and loved Anais Nin in my 20's and read this bio on a round road trip from Sydney to Brisbane. I enjoyed it so much I didn't even get car sick.
March 18, 2012
wonderful
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews