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Rating: 
Summary: Bold and Honest
Review: Enough revisionist feminist baloney. Nin was an immensely gifted and provocative writer possessing a tremendous intellect. These diaries also reveal the pain and strange behavior of a very disturbed mind. That she managed to write at all is a tribute to her inner strength, but...she is no shining example to trot out at NOW chapter meetings and extol as a model for feminine liberation, power or whatever. This was a sad, sad life of languor wrapped in a gauze of (she thought) sexual triumph. I cannot imagine what is so wonderful about a man or a woman who will only be remembered for the erotic literature that s/he churned out. Nin's was a wasted life. Beautifully written, but wasted.
Rating: 
Summary: An Amazing Document
Review: For the love of ... Are we reviewing the book, or are we critiquing the woman? We're reviewing the book, right? So why so much moralistic brouhaha about the writer's behavior? When Van Gogh's work is auctioned off for a gazillion dollars, is the fact that he was mentally ill of great concern, or is there more interest in his artistry, his skill, and his innovative and altogether original treatment of a mundane subject? Yes, Anais Nin describes doing some things that we find disturbing. (Regarding the abortion, back in those days when very little was known about the fetus, late-term abortions were common and there was no moral dilemma. We simply can't judge her by our modern understanding. And as for her bizarre relationship with her father, one again would need to understand the context, the extremely complicated history from which the behavior arose.) So enough of the judgments of Anais Nin's descriptions of her own behavior (does she get points for honesty?) and take a look at the writing. I simply defy anyone to describe such strange events with as much brilliance and poetry. Nin's writing is like a ballet on ice; it is stylized, feminine, passionate and strict at the same time. Who else could divulge the darkest secrets with the delicacy of a geisha serving tea? Some day Nin's achievement will be recognized by the literary establishment. In the meantime, if you don't count yourself among the squeamish, judgmental, or easily disturbed, buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: An Amazing Document
Review: For the love of ... Are we reviewing the book, or are we critiquing the woman? We're reviewing the book, right? So why so much moralistic brouhaha about the writer's behavior? When Van Gogh's work is auctioned off for a gazillion dollars, is the fact that he was mentally ill of great concern, or is there more interest in his artistry, his skill, and his innovative and altogether original treatment of a mundane subject? Yes, Anais Nin describes doing some things that we find disturbing. (Regarding the abortion, back in those days when very little was known about the fetus, late-term abortions were common and there was no moral dilemma. We simply can't judge her by our modern understanding. And as for her bizarre relationship with her father, one again would need to understand the context, the extremely complicated history from which the behavior arose.) So enough of the judgments of Anais Nin's descriptions of her own behavior (does she get points for honesty?) and take a look at the writing. I simply defy anyone to describe such strange events with as much brilliance and poetry. Nin's writing is like a ballet on ice; it is stylized, feminine, passionate and strict at the same time. Who else could divulge the darkest secrets with the delicacy of a geisha serving tea? Some day Nin's achievement will be recognized by the literary establishment. In the meantime, if you don't count yourself among the squeamish, judgmental, or easily disturbed, buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Metaphor...
Review: I enjoyed this volume of the unexpurgated diaries more than any of the others. The writing, the descriptions, the emotions all find Nin at her expressive peak. Much has been made of Nin's diaries as possible lies, a place for to take creative license, and it is my opinion that what is described with her father is purely that. It is a psychoanalytic metaphor. It is well-known that psychoanalysis views a woman being with an older man as one that is secretly longing for daddy. I believe Nin just took the interpretation to a new high. Great book, but don't take it at face value.
Rating:
Summary: Disturbing!
Review: Incest, the second diary in Nin's "unexpurgated" journal works, is both elegant and disturbing. It is horribly fascinating because it is a "poetic" look at psychic pain. Nin, the reader soon deciphers, was probably a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. While her prose was among the best I had ever read, her attempts to romanticize her sexual relationship with her father did not work with me! She hated men: her father, her husband, her brothers, her therapist, and her countless lovers. She enjoyed hurting them. What does a sick person do to a good husband like Hugo? She abuses him; mistreats and makes a thorough fool of him. After an abortion, does a deranged diarist opt to heal without viewing the aborted fetus? Not at all! She holds the fetus in her arms and babbles about "mothering" Henry Miller! This powerful, but horrific work would be a fascinating case study for any psychologist! Her "passionate" and "white hot" sexual affairs were simply provocative blows of rage against a father who abused her. She was a fantastic artist and a manipulative and ambitious charmer who was able to channel her incredible pain into her work. Even though I am a lover of many of her writings(Henry and June was my favorite!), I will always believe she would have contributed so much more to literature in general if she had received the psychological help she so desperately needed.
Rating: 
Summary: But yet, you kept reading ...
Review: Regardless of the subject matter, Anais Nin is an incredible writer and her way with words was probably part of her charm in life. Her ability to describe even the most perverted behavior as something transcendent and meaningful probably was the ability that kept her circle of lovers around her. She could make the most petty behavior seem poetic by her descriptions and that's seductive to someone caught in a relationship with such a person. I read the journals of Anais Nin not because I identify with her, or even sympathise with her, but because I enjoy the way she makes every small event of her life seem like something elevated and rife with meaning. I am fascinated by the lurid details and by the paradox of all her affairs, were these men sexually abusing her, or was she using them? It seems, somehow both. And there's a little bit of teenage angst still lurking inside me that was never cured. The part of me that still listens to the Smiths and loves Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton adores Anais Nin and her glorious tragic screwed-upness.
Rating:
Summary: Goes Places I Didn't Want To Follow
Review: This is a difficult book to read and to write about. It is technically well-written and competently edited. The subject matter is distressing and Nin's own stated approach to the subject matter is extremely odd. Nin's own view of herself as ultimately liberated is, I think, self-serving to the point of blindness. I suppose she can be applauded for a refusal to consider herself either a "victim" or a "survivor" of childhood sexual abuse, but her revelling in it hardly seems praiseworthy. This is the voice of Nabokov's Lolita, all grown up and returning compulsively to the taboos which were broken for her before she was of an age to express or understand consent. Therefore she is more to be pitied than scorned, though she probably would not welcome either reaction to her. I became convinced as I read further that Nin was seriously mentally ill. Her viewing her compulsions as her own free choice was a part of her illness. It's a good thing she never raised any children.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: You're generally in one of two camps when it comes to Nin. It was true when she was alive and it seems to be just as true now that she's dead. If you're in the camp that loves her, you will love this diary. Her writing is beautiful. I've read the biographies of her and I know that she had a tendency to embellish the facts or even to outright lie, but that doesn't destroy my enjoyment of her diaries in the least. If the pages contained in her journals are not an exact representation of the reality she was living (is there such a thing?) they are a representation of her life the way she wanted to see it...and really, isn't that what being an artist is all about? She gives a very clear image of a world that is completely alien to most of us; a world that many of us might like to find but have never had the courage to seek. She writes of a world full of artists and lovers and intellectual friends...a world full of life and eaters of life. It's magnificent. Truth or fiction, it doesn't matter to me.
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