A sharp, screwy, messy take on modern femininity.
As relevant now as when it was first published in French in 1998, this novel shreds the feminine ideal to pieces.
When Claudine and Pauline were children, their father openly preferred Pauline, who was “cunning, mischievous, and so sharp.” Claudine, on the other hand, “was not very clever, frankly, not very smart.” All grown up, the twins can’t stand each other. Claudine lives a promiscuous life in Paris; Pauline lives outside the city, wears shapeless, baggy clothes, and waits for her boyfriend, Sébastien, to be released from prison (for crimes unknown). One day, Claudine calls with a request: She wants to be a pop star, and she’s got the clothes, the body, and the attitude; all she needs is for Pauline to come and sing for her. Pauline does, but, what’s more surprising is, that same night, Claudine hops out a window, dies, and Pauline decides to step into her place, permanently. She’ll wear Claudine’s clothes, her makeup, and heels, and she’ll go through with the plan: record an album, make a ton of money. This is where Despentes’ (Vernon Subutex 1, 2017, etc.) novel really gets going. Despentes is a French writer, critic, and noted feminist, and this novel shows her at her best: It is a mean little book, wickedly funny, totally lascivious, often pornographic. Despite the bits about their childhood, Despentes isn’t really interested in Claudine’s and Pauline’s psychology. She’s interested in the way that Pauline steps into Claudine’s role the way that a drag queen steps into a costume. Unfortunately, the book suffers from the kind of flatness that afflicts all ideological fiction, no matter how expertly constructed. It works best when Despentes isn’t trying to make a point.
A sharp, screwy, messy take on modern femininity.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-936932-27-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Feminist Press
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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