This book is seen both as French pornography and as a work of philosophical transgressive fiction. Which is it? That’s for you to decide. It uses imagery of the eye — and, as substitutes for the eye, imagery of testicles and eggs and other globular items — metaphorically throughout the book, and this emphasis makes the narrative far more focused on the eye than on the characters. Their depravity isn’t the story or a vessel for the story, really, the eye is. The shock and titillation readers may have felt a century ago feel almost blasé nowadays, making some of the intention feel thin. 

TW for sexual assault, urine, gore, and unusual sex acts. I would not recommend this to a casual reader, but for those that choose to partake, you may care to read Barthes’s essay on it.