Unveiling Desire and Deprivation: Inside Melissa Febos’ Provocative Year Without Sex
Reviewed by Brian Watson
Melissa Febos’ The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex seems to demand two different reviews. One for readers of memoirs and one for writers of memoirs. For the readers, let me begin here.
I fell in love at the first sentence: “It is raining.” Three words, and yet evocative of the wide range of emotions that rain can trigger. A few more pages, and Ms. Febos has a direct cue for the reader: “As in love among humans, we cannot appreciate a text until we really see it, and in order to see it we have to get out of the way.” This encapsulates the journey the reader then shares with the author. To see, to know love, we have to get out of the way.
