Dear reader, please curl up with your computer as though it were this week's issue of Soap Opera Digest and read the following lines: "Janette's drink was spiked, then three men raped her. Sophie is in the midst of an affair and says she has never felt so sexy. Margie just reckons her husband is "an awful f***." Those aren't characters sketches from depressing daytime TV, however -- they are the first lines of an article in the Daily Telegraph about "Sex Lives of Australian Women," a new book by Joan Sauers. It becomes even more operatic as you read on: insatiable desire, sexual frustration, lazy lovers, infidelity and sex tapes! These are Aussie women's secret truths, says Saunders, who collected their stories through an anonymous online survey of 2,000 women.

Forgive my cynicism, but it seems that the juiciest truths of some are being projected onto the whole of Australian women. In addition to salacious narrative accounts, though, the book dispenses of some statistics that are legitimate and shocking(ly familiar): For instance, one in three women reports having been the victim of sexual assault. There are other figures that are less likely to send your jaw to the floor: Women's average lifetime number of sex partners is 13; a quarter of Aussie ladies regularly watch pornography; nearly half say they want sex most of the time when it is offered; and 70 percent of twentysomethings have sent sexual text messages, while 22 percent have starred in their own private sex tape. Another revelation is that most women desire lovers "who are not 'rubbish'" in bed. You don't say!

Most of the respondents simply admit to having healthy sexual drives (which some aren't having fully satisfied). But, it hardly seems that there's need to worry about the whole of Aussie women turning into the stuff of daytime TV -- or, as they say Down Under, she'll be apples.