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"    Photo: Emmanuele Scorcelletti   For someone who has been celibate for the majority of her adult life, Sophie Fontanel sure is good at writing about sex. The Art of Sleeping Alone, the candid, funny memoir she penned about her years of abstinence, became an instant bestseller in France and is now arriving in American bookstores. Here, Fontanel, a novelist and editor-at-large for ELLE France, dishes on her decision to put her private life up for public consumption. What made you decide to finally publish your story? I have no fear anymore\u2014I&amp;#039;m 50 years old now, and mature enough not to have a problem with saying how I feel. I realized it was important for me to write this book in particular because I&amp;#039;ve noticed that many other women believe they have to lie and act as if their sex life is so rewarding when that&amp;#039;s simply not the case\u2014in actuality they are bored or unfulfilled.   Obviously, there are many women who are making love and having a lot of fun\u2014but theirs is a different story. There have certainly been times in my life when I&amp;#039;ve had great relationships and been very happy. But my decision to be alone, to refuse to have sex in a mechanical way, was a reaction to experiences of making love when you really feel that it&amp;#039;s not the right thing for you, or you feel like you&amp;#039;re pretending that it isn&amp;#039;t a big deal for you when that&amp;#039;s not the case. Do you think your experience particularly resonates with French women? I think that the issues I have faced are universal. Perhaps it&amp;#039;s worse in France because we&amp;#039;re supposed to be so gifted in seduction, but I think that in general, it&amp;#039;s very rare to feel truly free when you&amp;#039;re a woman, even in free countries. Our freedom is spoiled by this idea that if we are single, we&amp;#039;re going to die. Knowing how to live alone and be happy being alone is very important. What was it like to have your private life become the subject of public scrutiny and debate when your book was first published? The day after the book was published in France, I was invited to a big broadcast in Paris, and the journalists were talking to me as if I were a strange animal in a zoo\u2014as if I were the only one in the world who was not making love. But within a week, my book became a bestseller, and the attitude totally changed. Everybody realized that I was actually a spokeswoman for a surprising number of people. In your memoir, you discuss the frustration of feeling disconnected during your early sexual experiences, and also during the years you spent dating. Were you surprised at how many other people have admitted to sharing the same sentiments? At first\u2014but I think there is a gap between dreams and reality for so many women today. The problem is not that women are getting hurt in relationships\u2014love and relationships are always painful. The problem is that the disappointment now occurs right from the outset. You meet a man, and with the first SMS text, you&amp;#039;re already hurt. You&amp;#039;re disillusioned very quickly, and it&amp;#039;s not because men are awful\u2014it&amp;#039;s because something has been destroyed in our link with men, through technology and the way that dating culture has evolved. Women still want to be cherished and feel a connection, and that seems to elude them from the outset. Do you see choosing solitude as a form of empowerment rather than withdrawal? Yes. I think that, whether for a short or a long period, solitude is very important and can cultivate a great deal of strength. All that love you are not making is being channeled into you. If and when you do finally meet a man who pleases you, all that desire will still be there, ready and waiting\u2014so you shouldn&amp;#039;t be afraid of taking a pause. I&amp;#039;ve found that the main misconception about sex is that the more you do it, the better you are. Why does our society think that we have to make love so often? Clearly, there&amp;#039;s something to be said for the fact that so many people are relating to my story\u2014people who desire another kind of narrative than the one that&amp;#039;s been laid out for us. Sometimes we have the right to stop making love, and to know that it doesn&amp;#039;t have to translate into a loveless life. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/news/a23478/sophie-fontanel-the-art-of-sleeping-alone-interview/>