I typically enjoy the work of Anais Nin although this one was somewhat difficult for me to get into.

Tristine Rainer met Anais Nin at 18 years old. Her life was never the same. Anais Nin lead life on her terms and according to her own set of rules. Tristine Rainer quickly became a part of that life and lifestyle.

There's sometimes danger in spilling the tea, as they say. We have public figures who we hold in such esteem, but we later find out...were just people, with flaws and prejudices. Rainer provides an interesting view of Nin's life and beliefs. It's felt dirty reading it, to be honest. To read about the nooks and crannies, the lies and stories.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Unfortunately, I struggled to finish this book due to what has been going on around my personal space. The sadness around me kept me off anything close to it. I took a hiatus of three months but I am back at it.
The book begins with the meeting of Tristine with her mentor Anaḯs and the author takes as through this journey of how Tristine is sucked up into this life and persona that she wants so much to be a part of. She is taken down by most of the circumstances that she has to go through to become what she anticipates or thinks is her epitome. Despite all that she still finds a way to pick herself up and keep moving.
I kept getting angry because all I could think was …..`not again’…. Anaḯs almost looks like she totally takes advantage of this little girl who really wants to be like her. At some point, I wanted to punch her in the face. The question in my mind was, ‘How much does one have to take to learn a lesson’. Anaḯs was a special character; she evoked all kinds of emotions in me. Her personas kept shifting , I almost felt it was impossible.
Apprenticed by Venus is a book that will make you question the rules that govern a friendship and the abuse of it. Anaḯs pushed the boundaries especially when she asks Tristine to carry this burden about the secrets of her life and makes her responsible for them as well. She drives the knife deeper in the heart of their circle of sisterhood when she denies Tristine the one thing she so wanted in her life to make her mentor proud. She puts terms that looked almost impossible as much as she does it later on in life.
I struggled with the many names and characters that all looked important to the story line at the beginning but somehow the author unconsciously reminds us that the book is all about Tristine and Anaḯs. The men in this book all live in a completely different aspect of life. I am confused on which category I should place them, is it love, lust, friendship or fantasy. At the end of the day it was clear that Anaḯs would do anything to live her life to the fullest not taking into consideration the effect that it had on the people around her.
A good read for those who appreciate friendship in its entirety. No matter how good or bad it is, there is a lesson to be learnt.As quoted, " You were a creature of flight and had to fulfill your nature"

When Tristine Rainer was just 18 in 1962 she met Anais Nin for the first time and from that moment her life was inextricably linked with the writer who cast an immediate spell over her. In her thrall from that moment she remained at her beck and call and was a constant support. This memoir of her time with and, on occasion, without Nin is interesting on many levels. It’s a literary biography, a literary and cultural history, and an intimate musing on a key relationship in Rainer’s life. I very much enjoyed the book but remained to the end totally bemused about Nin’s power over other people, both men and women, and failed to comprehend her so-called charms. She seems to me to have been the most selfish and manipulative of women, a deeply unpleasant narcissist, and I could relate neither to her nor to Rainer, who seemed so foolishly besotted. However, it’s an interesting read and I learnt a lot from it.

"…In fact, for me, having come of age in the 1950’s, a man taking you while you were helpless was a secret fantasy. One where I could have pleasure without guilt, as when I imagined myself being bound to a factory conveyor belt and carried on it to a man like nougat centers to the chocolate dip—moving toward desire free of volition."

Tristine Rainer, an academic professor in her later years, now confesses her rapturous secret life at once riveting and hinged on a sensuality deemed as generally too dangerous. But Rainer today must not care what most of us think and perhaps she feels strongly about the importance of her subject. In the early sixties Anaïs Nin had become her mentor as Rainer signed on as confidant. The story of their relationship reveals in greater detail what Nin has previously confessed to in her diaries. This is the backstory, and it offers a deeper glimpse, or even perhaps a more honest gaze, into what impelled Nin to behave in ways that are still, in some holy circles, unacceptable today. The sexually liberated woman is still at risk for condemnation. Anaïs Nin was either a precursor to the women’s movement, or perhaps, in degrees, a founding mother of it. Having to wait thirty years to publish this revealing memoir due to Nin’s second husband remaining alive, this confession proves to be graciously insightful as well as an interesting read.

I simply could not get into this book at all after reading just a few pages. The writing is not very good and the characters do not seem real. Having read Anaís Nin as a young woman, I thought perhaps I would gain some insight into her character and life, but that does not seem to be the case with this book. Perhaps the writer could get some coaching on her writing to improve it.

For those of us who came to legendry diarist Anaïs Nin’s original published journals, which she edited herself for publication in the 1960s, she appeared to be a free and independent woman. There was a brief mention of a husband in the 1930s, but nothing more. She seemed a woman who lived by her writing, printing some of her own volumes, first living in Paris, then New York, before escaping to a life in the sun of California’s hills.

In the mid-1980s and 1990s the truth began to emerge – and reading of that truth felt like a betrayal as a reader and admirer of Nin’s journals. There was Deirdre Bair’s biography, simply titled Anaïs Nin: A Biography published in 1995 and there was the succession of a publication of Nin’s unexpurgated diaries, usually centred around a theme. From the 1930s affair between Nin and writer Henry Miller, to her marriage to Hugh Guiler in the 1920s, the truth seeped out. Nin had affairs with her psychoanalyst, her father, and a host of other men, while being married to Guiler.

Bair’s biography opened further seams of the lies Nin lived. That at the age of forty-four in 1947 she met a younger man, Rupert Pole, and went west with him on a road trip, falling in love with him and then living with him. She lied to him about trying to divorce her banker husband, and from then on maintained a trapeze act of living in New York for months at a time with Guiler and then flying back to Pole. She even married Pole, while still married to Guiler, who she never, in the end, did divorce. Both men “believed” the lies – both wanted to, it seemed, despite the inconsistencies and holes in her story.

When Pole phoned Guiler’s New York apartment in the 1950s and Nin answered – what was she doing there? She still managed to convince him with another lie. Says Rainer: “She had chosen not to choose, and in so doing she had entered the land of neither and both, the land of the absurd where no ordinary laws applied. Other women dreamt of having more than one love, of combining the qualities of two men into one perfect husband. But only she had dared to live that dream.”

The reason? Rainer quotes Nin: “No. I can’t leave either man because I know how it feels to be abandoned. I couldn’t inflict that on someone I love. I’m trapped by my compassion.”

But the effect of reading these lies and the truth on a reader who started on Nin’s journals at twelve was electrifying. I felt betrayed, and lost interest in her writings. I felt let down. How many other readers did too? Especially those who had considered her a feminist, a free, independent woman, first reading the diaries in the 1960s and 1970s as the feminist movement exploded?

Tristine Rainer’s poignant, moving “novoir” a memoir with true characters and dialogue, but in the style of a novel, as she notes at the start, begins in Greenwich Village in 1962. Rainer is eighteen and introduced to Nin and Guiler for the first time. The story intertwines the life of Nin with Rainer’s experiences as a young woman, entering academia, falling into and out of love, and, of course, being swept away by Nin’s guiles. Along with Nin’s friend Renate Drucker, Rainer helped Nin maintain the fragile web of lies she had told, helping to maintain the fiction her life had become – even as ironically, she struggled to write creative fiction that wasn’t based on passages in her journal. As Rainer writes: “Anaïs was always amazed at how readily an appropriate lie would come to her in a pinch, yet when she tried to write fiction, she couldn’t make it up. All she could do was rewrite and disguise her diary entries.”

And where Rainer succeeds is lifting the veil off the artifice that has become part of the legend of Nin: what emerges is a real woman, full of charm, a coquette even in her sixties, a woman who was determined to shield her two husbands from the fact of her bigamy. A woman who emerges as a true friend to Rainer in the end – helping her get over a broken heart, and being a supportive mother figure at times. The feelings of betrayal soften while reading this: you start to understand Nin the woman. I read this book compulsively, quickly, devouring the details of Nin’s life and Rainer’s honest, yet still sympathetic portrait of a woman whose charisma charmed all around her, not just the lovers and husbands. Nin lived a remarkable life, certainly, even if it wasn’t to everyone’s taste. Rainer remarks on the magic that drew others in: “The wonder was that Anaïs, a deeply flawed person— a narcissist, a bigamist, a liar, and a deviant— was so lovable. The wonder was that from such a defective source shone so much light before her diminishment.”

It's equally satisfying reading about Rainer’s own journey. While the story lifts the veil on her friendship with Nin, it also tells the story of a young woman discovering herself through work and love her own writing, her own journals and shows how she was shaped and encouraged by Nin. Equally, the friendship is not all plain sailing – and Nin’s flaws are revealed in Rainer’s memoir. Her duplicity could extend to friendship too, and one of the strengths and highlights of the story is showing both sides of a treasured connection.
Nin’s diary writing still shines, whether you’re reading her edited versions, or the unexpurgated versions that are still being released. Published this year is Trapeze, about her double life, flying between the coasts from Pole to Guiler. But the polished versions are now tarnished by what was left out – that Nin had a husband who supported her and her numerous lovers – and that Nin both had lovers while being married and then became a bigamist by marrying Pole. A marriage between the edited and the unexpurgated diaries might be the best read, but I suspect that would be impossible to achieve.

Still, what you can take from Nin’s life and from this superb evocation of her later years, is a wonder at the magic that was Nin, a woman who tried to live as so few had tried before, and certainly not in her lifetime. It took deception, but it also took courage to live and love as she did. And this book restores my own faith in the writer I first encountered at age twelve. Read it for this reason, if you’ve ever felt betrayed by the lies that were then uncovered. But read it and prepare to be drawn in, as so many were, by the magic of Anais Nin, the woman, the writer, the charmer.

“I knew how she was, adamant about others keeping her secrets, but careless in exposing the intimacies of others.”

That quote stayed with me the most after having read Apprenticed To Venus. Anaïs was obviously the sort of person that fished confessions, revelations, and intimacies out of people with ease. Most people are hungry for a confidant, people love to give away their juiciest parts, so long as they have an audience they think they can trust, after-all even criminals talk, stories need to be told, it’s human nature. I’ve said before, the marrow of Anaïs Nin’s writing is in her diaries. She edited them for an audience, but even if she were writing for herself alone, something is always held back for self-preservation. We can hardly be honest with ourselves, about ourselves, how can it be any different in the records we keep of our life or revelations about others? How can we expect pure honesty with each other? Anaïs as feminist truly was a persona she wore, not much different than celebrities of today. She was a great manipulator, as the famous often are, and knew how to seduce men and women alike. That Anaïs used a very young Tristine Rainier, and set her up as an accomplice in her deceptive life is wildly evident in this memoir.

Anaïs knew how to charm people and she was just as gifted at cutting them out until they begged, willing to do anything just to be let back in her ‘circle.’ Take youth and the hunger to escape one’s monotonous existence, to live in the present and taste the very essence of life so one day they may take those moments and ‘write so they can taste life twice’. Is it any wonder that Rainier was lured in by artists, musicians, and all the exciting places? There was artifice in Anaïs that anyone can see has grown to astronomical proportions in celebrities of today, but never have I read about someone who was able to live a split life with two husbands for countless years and be in the public spotlight without exposure! Reading about her spicy sexual adventures and love affairs didn’t inspire, it downright exhausted me and to think I am decades younger than she was. How do you keep up with so many lies, always a step away from disaster? Her life was complete farce, to look at your beloved (or beloveds) and live with the shame of your betrayal day in and day out? I’m not made of such stern stuff. It’s a gut rot, those lies.

The diarist is a sort of murderer, you can’t fully trust what you read about people because all stories, false and true, are told from one perspective. Often, people are caricatures- the diarist takes only certain moments and expands on them. All of us can be monstrous or angelic, depending on who is doing the writing and how they feel about us just in the that one moment. I cringe looking back at my own journals, the assassinations of character because someone hurt me, or the gushing praise for another because of tender feelings of happiness and let’s face it- how much is any sane person going to publish about themselves that reveals their own monsters? Most people don’t want to be seen as they really are when no one is looking. Anaïs knew how to sell an image, faking it half the time, but even so there are always slips and cracks. The real person bleeds through, now and then. Are we any different these days with our online personas, our ‘best foot forward’ and all that?

As mentor to Tristine Rainier, there was certainly genuine connection, in fact I think Anaïs fell in love with people until they no longer interested her or were of use. People were curiosities to her, pets that she maybe adored and then got sick of. I think about her incestuous relationship with her father, having read other memoirs about women in similar forbidden, shocking relationships one has to wonder just how damaged she was and how that affected every bond she had with others. Everything she did seemed to have a man at the core. A feminist wouldn’t need to lie, she wouldn’t need to ‘compartmentalize’ her life as Anaïs did. Would a true feminist abuse other women, through her selfishness? It’s strange, but Anaïs in many ways was like the sort of men she felt were vulgar. Her fictional stories weren’t the best but I am a staunch fan of the diaries, because the writing is expressive and beautiful- her ‘non-fiction’. Remember, even diaries are a sort of fiction, aren’t they?

It’s always interesting how people are crushed when their favorite celebrity is just like the rest of us, selfish, weak, liars when it suits their purposes, insecure… but Anaïs was also cultured, strong, supportive, loving, articulate and an artist, because in the end her life was performance art, wasn’t it? The problem is, when you create yourself to be seen in a certain light, you lose your own meaning.

Anaïs Nin’s protégé, Tristine Rainier, was seduced by Nin’s bohemian existence and is now able to reveal the secrets she held close, because although her mentor abused the confidences of her closest friends, Rainier held her own tongue proving her loyalty. This memoir is one of the best I have read about Anaïs Nin, by turns shockingly shameful and yet, fascinating. There is a struggle still between what’s acceptable sexually for a man as opposed to a woman. The world is bursting with true stories about men keeping several wives, even entire families secret, but strangely a woman being a bigamist comes off as just as distasteful to me, because at the core it is not about male/female but betrayal. Nin’s life didn’t seem free to me, chained as she was by lies, desperate enough to manipulate her young protégé and others. Is that really what we women want? To be equally vulgar? Women have a right to their sexuality as much as any man, but neither should abuse others. Human nature loves to deceive though… fame, pleasure, greed seems to be a driving force. I kept thinking, there are people who kill to keep their secrets. Isn’t that strange? That she contained her life much in the same way dangerous people do?

Publication Date: July 11, 2017

Skyhorse Publishing

Arcade Publishing

I think this would work best for readers only lightly acquainted with Anais Nin's biography: if you're familiar with her life and writings then this doesn't add much - in fact, it feels fairly superficial, telling us what's happening and how people feel rather than showing us through actions. Rainer's own interspersed life holds some interest, telling us what it was like for a young woman growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. Nin as mentor is glamorous even in her 60s, and her frank discussions about female sexuality was groundbreaking at the time, but is far less transgressive today.

Good as an introduction to Nin's life and writings.