Rebecca Mead says it's "dispiriting":

Her experience is not so different from that of many young American women now, caught in a post-post-feminist narrative in which it is proposed that sexual emancipation may be achieved through emotional disengagement. Whatever light “Waiting to Be Heard” does or does not shed on the awful death of Meredith Kercher, it offers a dispiriting account of prevailing mores. It is not new for students to “give casual sex a chance.” (Today’s twenty-year-olds may be surprised to learn that even their parents might have tried it.) It is new for girls to strive to adopt the sexual behavior of the most opportunistic guy on campus. “I wanted sex to be about empowerment and pleasure, not about Does this person like me? Will he still like me tomorrow?” Knox writes. But if empowerment, that much abused and much diminished term, means anything it means being able to say no as well as yes, without censure or shame.

Mead's point is subtle and finely argued, but there's a faint whiff of disgust in it, isn't there? The comparison Mead makes to Portrait of a Lady does something to honor Knox's own desires and agency as she set out for Italy, but then the knife turns, and it turns on the question of Knox's attitude about sex. I mean, if an adult woman wants to "adopt the sexual behavior of the most opportunistic guy on campus," shouldn't she be allowed to? Isn't that her prerogative? Granted, The Stranger hasn't gotten our copy yet, so I'm just spouting off here. But isn't there something a little dispiriting in what Mead's saying, too?