THREE IN LOVE: Mânages É Trois from Ancient to Modern Times

by Barbara; Michael Foster & Letha Hadady Foster ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 2, 1997

A hop, skip, and jump through the centuries, peering into crowded bedrooms and extolling the joys of sex in triplicate. Foster and Foster (Forbidden Journey: The Life of Alexandra David-Neel, not reviewed) and alternative health expert Hadady have themselves been a trio for more than a decade, but this is no how-to manual and doesn't answer the frequently asked question about who does what to whom. Instead, using a very loose definition of ""mânage"" that includes husbands or wives with long-term but secret lovers outside the home, the authors cheerfully reel off vignettes of historical ""mânagers,"" from the Bible's Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar to the Stones' Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Marianne Faithfull. Delicious, slightly titillating gossip abounds about such well-known threesomes as Henry and June and AnaÜs Nin; Neal and Carolyn Cassady and Jack Kerouac, and, of course, almost any combination of male and female from the Bloomsbury group. Included also are, no surprise, rouâs like Casanova, who participated in any number of long-term and short-term mânages, philosophers like Rousseau and Nietzsche, and royalty from Henry II of France (with Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de Medici) to Princess Di (""There were three of us in this marriage""). Psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salome, a student of Freud's, participated in ""metaphysical"" mânages (no body contact, but a meeting of minds), and Superman/Clark Kent, with Lois Lane, flies as a symbol of fantasy mânages. More than a few hoary old tales surface, including those of Eleanor Roosevelt and her bodyguard, Earl Miller, and Queen Victoria and her servant, John Brown (lovers, possibly, but mânages?). This book is a 400-page scandal sheet, full of exaggeration and innuendo, but also good-humored and slightly spicy--to be shared in small doses with other mânagers or even around the water cooler when office rumor ebbs.

Pub Date: July 2, 1997

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 400

Publisher: HarperSanFransisco

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997

Categories: NONFICTION