In 1931, Nin was living with her husband Hugh just outside of Paris, but you could be forgiven for thinking of Nin as a single woman because not once in the first volume of her diaries is Hugh so much as mentioned. She is more preoccupied with her relationship with fellow writer Henry Miller and his wife ; considering the Millers were in her life together for just one year, they are the cause of an incredible obsession. Nin has never seen love and hate exhibited in such great degree in one relationship before. When June goes to New York, Nin and Henry begin a passionate and fiery affair that is both good and bad for her; she feels mad, insane, insatiable love for the first time, despite being married, and she feels liberated as a woman because she is finally able to act just like a man does in an unhappy marriage; however, the affair is not without its problems, or its consequences. She is so conflicted about her feelings that she begins to see a psychoanalyst, and her marriage begins to disintegrate.
However, her admiration for Miller on a personal level begins to erode as well. He is egotistical, somewhat unbalanced emotionally and not particularly adept at expressing his feelings in person In 1936 she publishes House of Incest, with Winter of Artifice following three years later. Despite her growing disillusionment for him as a man, Miller proved to be quite an influence on Nin; in fact, the style of her writing changed as she learned from him. They spent time musing over the way in which it was best to write. She was not in love with him per se anymore, but more enchanted by him, falling for not the man, but the way in which he was able to express words on the page.
One surprising aspect about the earlier diary entries is the way in which Nin seems to be living the high life in pre-war Paris. She seems blissfully unaware of Europe's impending implosion and dedicates her existence to persuading her husband to give her money which she then lavishes on a succession of politically ill-advised lovers. She leaves for America as war breaks out and she never returns to Paris.
Much of Nin's diary also deals with her relationship with her father. A pianist and an inveterate seducer of women, Joaquin Nin turns his attentions to his own daughter after returning to her life in the early 1930s. They make love frequently - love, because Nin is convinced that she wants the encounter as much as he does - and Nin feels attraction to him as she would to a man to whom she was not related. Her lover, Otto Renk, advised she sleep with her father before ending their relationship.
In 1947, Nin fell in love again, this time with a place, as she made her first trip to Acapulco. She spent a great deal of time in America, particularly in the Sierra Madre. We learn more in this part of the diary about her mother, whom she visits in New York before her death. The New York trip also enables her to hide from her husband who is relentlessly loyal to both her and their marriage. She becomes bored with Renk as a lover, and obsessed with an Inca man by the name of Gonzalo More, who fills her with a poetry and pleasure that she has not experienced before.
Her sexual hunger is ultimately assuaged by Rupert Pole. He satisfies her and she believes him to be the one for whom she has been searching her entire life. She feels that she needs love more than the average person, because only being wrapped up in love can make her forget the ugly things going on around her.
As the volumes of diaries continue to be published, they appear in subsequent volumes themselves. Nin details the way in which the publication of the first diary volume makes her feel. She also describes how her first dalliance with LSD almost killed her, leaving her with some significant and unexpected side-effects, including one for an advanced case of introspection. She debates the pluses and minuses of psychedelic drugs with writer Aldous Huxley at length, the debates annoying her to such an extent that she chronicles them in great detail.
Nin's writing career takes an interesting turn as she assumes the editorship of Eve, a magazine for women. Throughout her life, and throughout the diary, her working life is punctuated by a schedule created for a life she terms "trapeze", as she successfully swings back and forth between her husband, Hugh and her lover, Rupert.
