The very latest novel by Ève de Candaulie, “An Indecent Freedom”, is an autobiography. It is the sequel to her first two books, “Troubling Excitement” and “Promised Infidelity”. The libertine author recounts, with candour and spontaneity, how she reconciled her pregnancy with her liberated sex life.
When Ève de Candaulie offered me her new book to read, I was immediately taken with the idea of enjoying her writing again.
But I also hesitated a little. To be honest, I’m not really the ideal audience for a novel about motherhood. Having no children, and not planning to have any in the immediate future, I don’t know much about pregnancy, and it’s not really a subject I can relate to.
But I was delighted to discover “An Indecent Freedom”. Let me tell you a little more about it.
An Indecent Freedom: challenging the “mother or whore” cliché
When it comes to sex, pregnant women are still a major taboo.
Indeed, many men no longer want to make love to their pregnant wives. They start to see them as a “mum”, or rather a sort of asexual being whose sex is only there to give life, not to take and give pleasure. There are plenty of clichés about this.
And that’s not even mentioning the swinging scene! You virtually never see pregnant women in swingers’ clubs. And when there is one, generally she doesn’t get up to any mischief. Even Ève admits she found fewer potential partners on swingers’ sites, with many reluctant at the thought of having sex with a pregnant woman.
Of course, pregnant women attract the interest of some fetishists, and sometimes have a category of their own on porn sites. But being reduced to a fetish object isn’t necessarily flattering or appealing.
Yet the old-fashioned myth of “the mother or the whore” deserves to be broken. Pregnant women have a libido too: they are still people in their own right, and nothing obliges them to suddenly become paragons of purity and self-sacrifice.
Ève de Candaulie, polyamorous and a swinger, decided that conceiving a child shouldn’t force her to give up her sexuality, or her naughty nights out. Without telling us what we ought to do, she describes how she managed it.
An Indecent Freedom: the story of a free woman
Is maintaining an active sex life during pregnancy really that transgressive? Indecent? Or simply human?
Ève de Candaulie isn’t looking for wild adventures at all costs. Attuned to the changes in her body, she leads a healthy life. There’s no desire to provoke, no urge to break records… Just a wish to remain a free woman, with her desires and fantasies, continuing to enjoy life’s pleasures while becoming a mother.
Of course, pregnancy brings physical limitations that aren’t really negotiable. In “An Indecent Freedom”, Eve de Candaulie doesn’t sugar-coat everything. She also tells us how she gets so tired that she falls asleep at a swingers’ party, about the baby’s movements at unexpected moments…
I really enjoyed these down-to-earth confidences. This isn’t some rosy, soft-porn book where the heroine is constantly in tip-top form and wearing stilettos, but the real-life experience of a free woman.
An Indecent Freedom: a novel steeped in eroticism
In “An Indecent Freedom”, Ève de Candaulie also shares plenty of juicy erotic anecdotes. Sex may not be the novel’s only subject, but it is constantly present, with steamy scenes that will sweep you away.
Many thanks to Ève de Candaulie, who gave me the chance to discover her new novel.
You can find her:
“An Indecent Freedom” is on sale at Tabou Editions.
