A very well-written book based on the long-accomplished relationship between Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Quite an amazing story of collaboration detailing their mutual pursuit of every experience including writing, travel, politics, love, deceit, and sexual conquests. A very insightful and enjoyable read. ( )

This story of the relationship of Sartre and Beauvoir and their circle was a marvel of research and story-telling. Fascinating lives, well told. ( )

An very worthwhile biography..... very interesting on so many levels (psychological, historical/context, ethical/moral, spiritual/existential). As Irvin D. Yalom has so well pointed out, all of us struggle with some basic existential issues (e.g., life, death and anxiety), and Simone and Jean Paul were no exception. In fact, it seems they struggled with these universal questions more than most of us. I found the book exceptional and many of the critics come to the biography with what seems so clear to an outsider - preconceived notions and biases about these 2 extraordinary people. I found it interesting that Sartre struggled with "guilt" over the suicide of one of his girl friends. He was also very "deceitful" (intentionally choose to not be completely honest) when it came to his concurrent lovers.
In the end, I found Simone's life story to be the much more interesting.... as one of the first feminists of her generation. Just goes to show you what an education in philosophy can do...... powerful individuals, powerful message and an excellent author. This review is for the 2006 paperback edition by Hazel Rowley. 4 1/2 stars. Paul Floyd, Mpls, MN ( )

I read this after reading Carole Seymour-Jones's similar book A Dangerous Liaison. Both are well-written, informative books, and neither leaves me terribly impressed with Sartre and Beauvoir. In contrast to this book, A Dangerous Liaison weighs the moral character of the two subjects, finding them lacking in their propensity for seducing their minor students; their failure to put up a meaningful resistance to the Nazis (while afterwards claiming to have been defiant heroes); their willfully blind support of the USSR; and the lies and harm to third parties required to maintain their pact. With the exception of their behavior during World War II, which is dealt with only briefly, Hazel Rowley discusses these things, but pretty much without passing judgment.

I don't regard philosophers and intellectuals as people who necessarily deserve reverence. Like everybody else, they are as they do. They seriously undercut their moral pronouncements when even they can't live by them. It is fine to urge someone to do better than oneself if one admits one's own failings, or is attempting to pass on lessons learned the hard way. It is another to make lofty declarations of moral principles one doesn't even try to live by. Both of these books make it clear that Sartre and Beauvoir were liars and hypocrites, and their pact has only novelty to commend it. In fact, their freedom came at the cost of deceiving their "contingent" lovers, and the whole polyamorous throng was roiled by jealousy and back-biting. Asked how he dealt with his various women, Sartre admitted that he lied to all of them, especially to Beauvoir.

An interesting look at the realities of a much bally-hooed partnership. ( )

In her preface Hazel Rowley clarifies that this is not a biography. For that we would do best to turn to another work on Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Instead, Rowley is interested in constructing an intimate portrait of the romantic entanglements of de Beauvoir and Sartre, and in particular of the pact they had made to each other at the beginning of their own relationship. As Rowley writes:

'Sartre had made clear from the beginning that monogamy did not interest him. He liked women…and he did not intend to stop having affairs at the age of twenty-three. Nor should Beauvoir, he said. The love they had for each other was “essential,” and primary. They were “two of a kind,” each other’s double, and their relationship would surely last for life. But they should not deprive themselves of what he called “contingent” affairs, meaning secondary and more arbitrary' (p.28).

Rowley’s work reveals the strains that such “contingent” affairs put on their relationship, and the consequences for those other lovers, like the American writer Nelson Algren, who were thought to be “more arbitrary”. Overall it is an examination of de Beauvoir and Sartre’s attempt to maintain an unconventional partnership, and it raises questions about the reality of romantic love and individual freedom in the face of physical desire. ( )