Reviews

Sphinx by Anne Garréta

messedupmouth's review

inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

nakedsushi's review against another edition

3.0

3.5 stars

I made the mistake of reading part of the preface and some of my friends' reviews of this book, so I didn't get to experience it as intended. The English translation also doesn't really have the full effect, but a good experiment nonetheless.

islayfraser's review against another edition

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Une demie étoile pour la réussite de ne jamais genrer les deux personnages principaux, ni dans les adjectifs, ni dans les accords, ni dans les pronoms, un grand défi en français.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Violence, Death, and Drug abuse

peach__tree's review

1.0

Pretentious af and super fetishizing towards the black love interest. Did not work for me at all.

mixeterna's review

challenging dark reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I think learning about how Garréta navigated the gendered French language, and how this writing constraint and the story influenced each other, made me appreciate this book way more than I did while actually reading it. There's a lot to critique about it, but I appreciate how much food for thought it's given me about language and how it shapes identities.

freckledfemale's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I will be thinking about these characters and the way this story is told for a long long time

morinokaeru's review against another edition

4.0

Anne Garréta is part of the OuLiPo, a group of authors who give themselves restrictions as for the formal part of the book they write. So I was expecting something different, and Sphix was, in fact, something I had never read; the narrator and the other main character are not given a gender. Whenever there's a clue in the text that could give it away, it is immediately contradicted by another information that leads towards the opposide gender. It is quite amusing to try and figure out if "I" is a male or female, and if "A****", his/her partner is a woman or a man. It opens a lot of possibilities.
As for the story itself, it is a retrospective look on a particular moment in "I"'s life, which is his relationship with "A****". It is set in no particular time, mainly in Europe, but also in New York. The pace is slow, but not so much as to lose the reader's interest.
The main focus is put on the words used to tell the story, so the book is beautifully written. I would suggest, however, to read it in the original language, if possible, so that the beauty of it doesn't get lost in translation.

elenavarg's review

2.0

This novel was advertised to me as a queer and LGBT story ”without gender” but sadly, I didn’t see it. I’m sure this book would be much better in French (If you have the skills, read the original!) as the whole French language is gendered, but this doesn’t really work in English. Only the main character’s love interest A*** was gender-neutral to me, but there was no way I could see the protagonist as anything else but male. The protagonist was the most pretentious little snob I have ever read about and quite frankly, I have never met or read about a woman/a nb person who would come even close in pretentiousness. It’s a bother, because I really wanted to like this book.

readersreadingnook's review

challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

leasaurusrex's review

0.5

Ultra-raciste.

Et absolument pas une lecture LGBTQIA, et encore moins « non-genrée ». On n’a aucun peut-être aucun marqueur de genre concernant les protagonistes, mais le reste ne trompe pas.

Et c’est si pompeux, au point d’en devenir insincère. 

Bref, j’étais enthousiaste en commençant, et maintenant je n’ai juste plus envie d’aller voir les prouesses techniques des écrivains et écrivaines francophones. 

Arrêtez de mal vendre les livres aussi.