THE PRACTICAL SEDUCTRESS

Camaione discusses relationships, the 1970s sexual revolution, and how her early childhood experiences led her to an unconventional understanding of love and sex in this memoir.

The author came of age in the midst of the sexual revolution, experiencing it transcontinentally; her memoir explores the nuanced differences between sexual freedoms in New York versus Arizona, California, and Boston. Camaione opens with a pertinent quotation from Euripedes’ Electra: “Yet censure strikes hard at women, while men, the true agents of trouble, hear no reproach.” This passage sets the tone and delivers the book’s message from the outset; most of Camaione’s troubles described in this work were directly caused by men, or by misplaced trust in them. Before getting to the seductress portion of her personal narrative, Camaione dissects her childhood. She was the daughter of working-class parents in Syracuse, New York. She and her siblings, of whom she was the eldest, lived in fear of their father’s violent mood swings. The author, watching her mother deal with his abuse, developed the ways she would eventually come to approach men—learning, in her mother’s formulation, “when to take your hat and run.” The book is divided into three portions that chart her personal growth: Escape (childhood), Manhunt (college), and Reinvention (marriage). Camaione’s relationships with men are the crux of her journey throughout all three parts; each leads to moments of self-discovery. The three parts are tied closely together—though she learned the formal language of feminism in her “Manhunt” era, her mother and grandmother instilled these beliefs within her during her “Escape” period, and in her “Reinvention” phase, she was finally able to put them into practice. Always on the margins of her sexual exploration is the idea of non-monogamy. Although the word polyamory only appears once in the memoir, the ideas of being a mistress and embracing open marriage are at the forefront. Camaione does not share how her views on polyamory or her relationship style have evolved or remained consistent after the events described in the book. The memoir consequently feels slightly clipped, since a few important questions go unanswered. Still, the thematic resonances of where Camaione ends up are affecting and satisfying.

A frank memoir, equal parts scintillating, thoughtful, and moving.