Behind the Bedroom Door: Getting It, Giving It, Loving It, Missing It

Journalist Derrow has selected essays that explore the wealth and variety of female sexual experience, making for a gender-transcending tale of sex lives that manages to be philosophical, poignant—and a great bit of naughty fun. From Hope Edelman’s essay on her first love, who helped her cope with her mother’s struggle with breast cancer, in “The Sweetest Sex I Never Had,” to Lauren Slater’s joyful paean to married celibacy, Julie Powell’s frank recollection of cheating on her husband with a man who fulfills her masochistic fantasies, these stories are private and fraught, frank and self-aware. The women represented are old and young; lesbian, bisexual and straight. They draw attention to the special way sex evolves for women (as in Pari Chang’s essay on sex during pregnancy); their experience is so varied that it is likely readers will recognize their own untold stories and sexual selves in this collection. (Dec.)