''Nine and a Half Weeks: A Memoir of a Love Affair'' is a 1978 novel by

Ingeborg Day Ingeborg Day (née Seiler; November 6, 1940 – May 18, 2011) was an Austrian–American author, best known for the semi-autobiographical erotic novel '' Nine and a Half Weeks'' which she published under the pseudonym Elizabeth McNeill and which ...

, first published under the

pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

Elizabeth McNeill. It details the brief, sexually violent relationship between an art gallery owner and a

Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...

broker - based on Day's own experiences. The memoir was famously adapted into the 1986 erotic drama '' 9½ Weeks'', starring Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke.

Synopsis

The memoir is set in New York City. An art gallery owner enters a nine-week affair with a brutal, brutish, sadomasochistic

broker who regularly sexually abuses her in his apartment for amusement and pleasure. Unable to say no and sinking into complicity, the woman finds herself enjoying the beginning of the affair. Eventually, the relationship culminates in criminality, depravity and violence when he convinces her to rob a man at knifepoint in an elevator and forces her into having sex with someone else while he watches. The woman is forced to make a choice between her life and sanity or a mentally impoverished man incapable of feeling love , but who has manipulated her to love him. He often leaves her tied up, in immense pain, in his opulent apartment for hours at a time. The memoir ends after her nervous breakdown when he leaves her at a mental hospital. After undergoing therapy that lasts for months, she never sees him again.

Reception and legacy

The novel caused a scandal when it was published. In a 2012 ''New Yorker'' article,

Sarah Weinman Sarah Weinman is a journalist, editor, and crime fiction authority. She has most recently written ''The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World'' about the kidnapping and captivity of 11-year-old Flo ...

writes "''Nine and a Half Weeks'' is a potent antidote to what passes for erotica today. Instead of over-the-top fictional fantasy, McNeill's book, presented as memoir, is charged as much by explicitness as it is by absence. The reader is only privy to her perspective, and even then, it's occluded by the use of a pseudonym". While writing the book, Day conceived of it as an "erotic epic poem" and it holds a unique place in erotic literature as it is not an exploration of fantasy, but follows the form of an

epic Epic commonly refers to: * Epic poetry, a long narrative poem celebrating heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation * Epic film, a genre of film with heroic elements Epic or EPIC may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and medi ...

by offering a lengthy, narrative recounting of the sexual deeds and adventures of a woman.

References

{{reflist 1978 American novels BDSM literature Domestic violence in fiction Novels set in New York City