Want

Anya's Review 

In 1973 American author Nancy Friday released her bestselling book My Secret Garden. It was a landmark collection of anonymous women’s sexual fantasies that was translated in 10 countries and banned in others. It challenged traditional notions of female sexuality as passive and showed that women fantasise just as much as men, and that shame can lead to desire. Fast forward to 2024 and a similar project to give voice to female desire is embarked upon by the multiple award-winning American actress Gillian Anderson. This collection of letters from anonymous women about their sexual fantasies is published as the book appropriately enough called Want. Anderson began researching the topic when preparing for her role as Dr. Jean Milburn, sex therapist, in the smash hit British television comedy-drama series, ‘Sex Education’, that ran for four seasons.

In several ways Anderson’s introductions in the foreword and to the chapters of Want are in my view the most interesting parts of the book. They frame the project, in which hundreds of women were invited to submit online to a portal entitled ‘Dear Gillian’. She asks whether ‘women’s deepest internal desires [have]changed’ in the fifty years since the publication of My Secret Garden. Eight volumes of letters were received from women all over the world, and while only 174 made the final cut, they include the voices of teenage girls yet to have their first sexual encounter, women caught in the world of online hook-ups, married women and those in partnerships, women of every sexual orientation, exhausted mothers of young children, transgender women and older post-menopausal women. Anderson shares her discoveries, surprises, patterns observed around taboos and the great deal she learned about women and their sexuality. Because Anderson herself emphasises that she is without professional qualifications in the field, we cannot classify this collection as an academic work of psychology, socio-sexual history or sociology, such as Dr. Fiona Vera-Gray’s illuminating new book on a related topic, Women on Porn. Nevertheless, Want is more than erotic literature designed to entertain. The letters show that “sexual fantasies continue to play a vital and healthy role in our lives as women and genderqueer people.” A spectrum of voices was sought and while anonymous, demographic details of the women were asked for, so the letters came from a wide variety of nationalities, religions, sexual identities and backgrounds. The only boundary was the exclusion of illegal content. The book is organised in theme-based chapters and the range is truly eye-opening. Even so, Anderson’s purpose is a simple one: a desire to “start a new conversation about sexual power, particularly for women … all of us have the power to say-and get-what we really, really WANT”.

Publisher's Review 

THE INSTANT NO. 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER.

'Want makes for addictive reading . . . compelling' - Guardian

'I just loved reading it. It's exceptional' - Fearne Cotton, Happy Place

'An empowering project' - Stylist

'Extremely sexy . . . Want is the horny manifesto your TBR list will thank you for' - Cosmopolitan

What do you want when no one is watching?

Who do you fantasise about when the lights are off?

When you think about sex, what do you really want?

When we talk about sex, we talk about womanhood and motherhood, infidelity and exploitation, consent and respect, fairness and egalitarianism, love and hate, pleasure and pain. And yet so many of us don't talk about it at all.

In this groundbreaking book, Gillian Anderson collects and introduces the anonymous sexual fantasies of women from around the world (along with her own anonymous submission). They are all extraordinary- full of desire, fear, intimacy, shame, satisfaction and, ultimately, liberation. From dreaming about someone off-limits to conjuring a scene with multiple partners, from sex that is gentle and tender to passionate and playful, from women who have never had sex to women who have had more sex than they can remember, these fantasies provide a window into the most secret part of our minds.

Want reveals how women feel about sex when they have the freedom to be totally themselves.