SOURCE: A review of The Woman Destroyed, in The New York Times Book Review, February 23, 1969, p. 4.

Below, Connell finds the novellas of The Woman Destroyed highly credible, purporting that they should not be read as fiction but rather as "extensions of the author."

Two long stories and a short novel on the menace of middle age. The only unsatisfactory thing about them is that they are not fiction. Simone de Beauvoir writes with perception, grace and intelligence on the subject of aging women very much as she wrote about all women in The Second Sex. She belongs to that estimable line of classically articulate Europeans; she is a pleasure to read, and for anyone who happens to be interested in women she is instructive. But the heroines breathe collectively, not individually. They are amorphous. They are extensions of Mme. de Beauvoir rather than themselves. Once this is accepted...