Aphrodite

Name: Aphrodite
Rating: 3.634 (127 reviews)
ISBN: 9780062254412

By Isabel Allende

Publisher Description

New York Times bestselling author of The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende celebrates the pleasures of the sensual life in this rich, joyful and slyly humorous book, a combination of personal narrative and treasury of erotic lore.

Under the aegis of the Goddess of Love, Isabel Allende uses her storytelling skills brilliantly in Aphrodite to evoke the delights of food and sex. After considerable research and study, she has become an authority on aphrodisiacs, which include everything from food and drink to stories and, of course, love. Readers will find here recipes from Allende's mother, poems, stories from ancient and foreign literatures, paintings, personal anecdotes, fascinating tidbits on the sensual art of foodand its effects on amorous performance, tips on how to attract your mate and revive flagging virility, passages on the effect of smell on libido, a history of alcoholic beverages, and much more.

An ode to sensuality that is an irresistible blend of memory, imagination and the senses, Aphrodite is familiar territory for readers who know her fiction.

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Aphrodite Reviews

3.5

Gianna

Created 5 months ago

Gray

Created 6 months ago

“So ngl I guess I read the description wrong but i thought this was about Aphrodite and it’s about Aphrodisiacs 😭 it was just okay wasn’t really for me”

wonderedpages

Created 6 months ago

“I picked up Aphrodite for book club thinking I was getting a lush, indulgent meditation on food, desire, and pleasure. The dust jacket promises sensuality, myth, recipes, and wit. What I actually read felt like a cookbook awkwardly stapled to a deeply personal, frequently disturbing collection of anecdotes that never quite decided what it wanted to be. This book is described as a love letter to eroticism, but for me, it read like a long, meandering preamble you would normally scroll past on a recipe blog. Pages and pages of personal memories, historical tangents, and shock-value stories before you are allowed anywhere near the recipes. While Allende undeniably has a beautiful way with language, that lyricism could not save the content itself. Some chapters genuinely made me recoil. Stories involving sexual coercion, assault, pedophilia-adjacent scenarios, animal cruelty, and human trafficking are repeatedly framed as illustrative tongue in cheek examples of eroticism. They are not erotic. They are frightening. The recurring pattern of women being controlled, worn down, shamed, and cornered into sex made it impossible for me to read this as celebrating aphrodisiacs. At several points, I felt like I was reading a thriller about impending violence rather than a book about pleasure. There are moments that almost work. A few historical asides are interesting. One chapter featuring a gigolo was unexpectedly thoughtful, and the only section that actually explored female pleasure with care and attention. The recipe sections, especially those credited to her mother, were warmer and more charming than the surrounding commentary. If the book had simply been a family recipe collection with cultural context, I might have liked it. Aphrodite feels deeply dated and wildly out of touch. Published in the late 1990s, it reflects attitudes toward sex, consent, and power that have not aged well. The obsession with shock value overwhelms any genuine exploration of intimacy. By the end, I felt less enlightened and more unsettled. I was left questioning why so many violent or degrading stories were treated as acceptable metaphors for desire. I can appreciate Allende’s command of language and her willingness to push boundaries. I just wish those boundaries had been pushed with intention and care rather than provocation for its own sake. This was marketed as an ode to sensuality. What I found was a disjointed and often offensive collection of musings that left me horrified.”

Diverse representation Unlikable Disjointed Slow-paced Historical Beautifully-written Descriptive Flowery/lush Original Abuse Animal abuse Child abuse Explicit sexual content Fat phobia Misogyny Sexual assault Substance abuse

Sofia Navarro

Created 9 months ago

Marchioness

Created 12 months ago

“Very strange idea. Lots of accidental classism in this book. Also a as someone who has a fraught with food it didn’t jive for me.”

Easy to read Witty

About Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende, born in Peru and raised in Chile, is a novelist, feminist, and philanthropist. She is one of the most widely read authors in the world, having sold more than eighty million copies of her books across forty-two languages. She is the author of several bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including The House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, and Paula. In addition to her work as a writer, Isabel devotes much of her time to human rights causes. She has received fifteen honorary doctorates, been inducted into the California Hall of Fame, and received the PEN Center Lifetime Achievement Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, and in 2018, she received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. She lives in California with her husband and dogs.

You can visit Isabel Allende at IsabelAllende.com or follow her on Instagram @AllendeIsabel, on Facebook at Facebook.com/IsabelAllende and on X @IsabelAllende

Other books by Isabel Allende

Story Telling