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dreadymorticia's review
5.0
Absolument génial. J'avais adoré et vu de nombreuses fois le film et j'ai adoré retrouver l'univers. J'ai mis un peu de temps à m'habituer à l'écriture de Virginie Despentes mais après quelques pages, j'ai eu un vrai coup de foudre.
samantha_winkel's review against another edition
2.0
This book felt like a chore to read. I kept losing interest and felt my mind wander.
alviclaire's review
3.0
Entre le 2.5 et le 3.
Lorsque j'avais lu la trilogie Vernon, j'étais toujours bouleversée après la lecture. J'étais plongée dans un univers totalement différent et sortir de ce monde me prenait quelques minutes. C'est une des raisons de pourquoi j'ai adoré cette trilogie.
Les jolies choses ne m'ont pas fait cet effet ... puis, l'histoire ne m'a pas autant percuté. Les personnages et le style manquent quelque chose. Je suis un peu déçue.
Bref, j'en lirais d'autres de Virginie Despentes avec plaisir!
Lorsque j'avais lu la trilogie Vernon, j'étais toujours bouleversée après la lecture. J'étais plongée dans un univers totalement différent et sortir de ce monde me prenait quelques minutes. C'est une des raisons de pourquoi j'ai adoré cette trilogie.
Les jolies choses ne m'ont pas fait cet effet ... puis, l'histoire ne m'a pas autant percuté. Les personnages et le style manquent quelque chose. Je suis un peu déçue.
Bref, j'en lirais d'autres de Virginie Despentes avec plaisir!
lancakes's review against another edition
4.0
I sprinted through this, but there's so much packed into it.
Despentes examines the performance of femininity, there's a lovely moment in the book when Pauline first steps out into the world as her sister, dolled up like a "slut", when she realises that no girl is really like this, none of the artifice comes fully naturally to anyone; and later, she remembers a time when she thought femininity was a trait one was either born with or without, she hadn't yet discovered that it could be performed.
But even more interesting to me than this hard look at the drag and work of femininity is the reckoning of Pauline with the life of her tragic sister Claudine as she takes over her life after her sister's suicide. At the outset Claudine is a blasé, cavalier woman who understands her feminine wiles and weaponises them.
But as Pauline slots herself into Claudine's life the reader discovers the context for Claudine's charms: the twins were raised in an abusive household, and as children Pauline was revered for her intelligence, and Claudine was beaten and emotionally tormented for the inability to impress her cruel father. During their father's long departure the girls hit puberty, and for Pauline it seems like overnight the twins' roles change: Claudine blossoms into a shiny, pretty thing and Pauline, forever the favourite, feels snubbed and like the world has gone crazy because everyone has begun showering love and attention on the forsaken twin.
Of course Claudine, a child so deprived of love, revels in this new attention, craves it, and engages in risky behaviour to attain and keep this facsimile of love and care. This is so particularly heartbreaking because it is such a true, common tale: even my own mother, a woman who I've only ever known to be strong and independent and, at least serviceably, self-caring, admits that for a long time after growing up abused she sought love in the only way she knew how: from men, using the only tools she thought she had: her femininity. With her past revealed, Claudine's nonchalance about things like sleeping with a decent man for shelter when she first arrives in Paris makes more sense. This is the currency she pays with, this is the value she extracts from men.
As children Claudine's behaviour with a puppy could be seen as foreshadowing for her future relationship with men: she locks it away, beats it when it whines, locks it away again to see if it's learnt its lesson, then showers it with affection. Truly though, this dynamic, and the way Claudine is depicted playing with her dolls, is a heartbreaking demonstration of a terrorised child seeking an outlet for the abuse heaped on her. It was really, really heartbreaking to uncover.
The men are another excellent forum for dissemination:
Sebastien is particularly interesting to me because of his Madonna/Whore complex. He loves Pauline for her homeliness, but fucks her sister often, in 'degrading' ways that he wouldn't dare with Pauline. As Pauline embodies Claudine Sebastien no longer values her, finally leaving when he confronts Pauline for cheating on him. He says that he can arrange to fuck Pauline and leave every once in a while if she'd like, but now that she's 'degraded' herself with promiscuity he can't be in a relationship with her, he talks of how he used to see girls dressed slutty in the street and think of his chaste Pauline and feel such pride. So strange, so contradictory, and yet so familiar: how many Johns hate sex workers for providing the very services they seek, how many men expect their partners to be faithful while they step out, how many dudes have slutty girls for practice and marry a Betty Draper for show. I could write a whole thesis on the scene when Pauline first leaves the house dressed as Claudine and encounters various white knights.
I have a lot of conflicting feelings about how sex is depicted in this novel, but I think that's right, because sex is very conflicting and difficult to navigate as a person who's devalued in society based on their gender and their relationship with sex and sexuality.
Sex is largely shown as degrading, transactional, unfulfilling, not sexy, and depressing.
There's also a lot of emphasis on men wanting to "fill all the holes".
My takeaway is that the sex that these characters have is so yucky because the motivations, politics and relationships behind the sex are yucky: fucking a gross man in a position of power over you is yucky, accidentally stumbling into a sex club when you're very much not in the mood would definitely be gross and not arousing, having rough passionless sex with your boyfriend when he thinks you're your sister is definitely complicated and icky.
I think the only good sex in the book is between Nicolas and Pauline. They seem to have a complicated relationship but one that's at least based on a common understanding and possibly mutual respect (or mutual disrespect). Nicolas is the dude character that I have the hardest time nailing down, and I think if there's a rounded male character in this story it's Nicolas. I have many, many issues with his inner monologues about fucking homely girls, about getting hard when Pauline works herself up in a rant, about being able to tell the difference between photos of Claudine and Pauline by whether he gets hard or not, there's a lot of fucking problems. But I don't feel upset that they end up together.
Finally, race is very uncritically broached in this book, and this may be my only real critique of the writing: all of the main characters are white French people. Pauline/Claudine live in a rough, poor neighbourhood, and people of colour dot the background of scenes, women in veils talk and laugh out the window, but they don't speak French so we have no access to their thoughts or personalities.
Policing is mentioned many times, which I find very interesting, but the ultimate conclusion that gets spelled out is that though the police over react and always show out with more force than necessary, the people outnumber them, and a riot could easily break out and overthrow the enforced power structure if someone would ever throw the first stone. Because no real issues of poverty, policing, xenophobia, racism etc are raised, and no person of colour is given more consideration than periphery observations, I read this as a commentary on enforced femininity and the potential for revolt and deconstruction.
Overall I fucking loved this book. I recommend listening to Precious Things by Fiona Apple at least once while reading it.
Also, this is the 2nd book in as many months where I discovered the cover art was created by an artist I adore. Molly Crabapple designed this effective, disturbing cover.
Despentes examines the performance of femininity, there's a lovely moment in the book when Pauline first steps out into the world as her sister, dolled up like a "slut", when she realises that no girl is really like this, none of the artifice comes fully naturally to anyone; and later, she remembers a time when she thought femininity was a trait one was either born with or without, she hadn't yet discovered that it could be performed.
But even more interesting to me than this hard look at the drag and work of femininity is the reckoning of Pauline with the life of her tragic sister Claudine as she takes over her life after her sister's suicide. At the outset Claudine is a blasé, cavalier woman who understands her feminine wiles and weaponises them.
But as Pauline slots herself into Claudine's life the reader discovers the context for Claudine's charms: the twins were raised in an abusive household, and as children Pauline was revered for her intelligence, and Claudine was beaten and emotionally tormented for the inability to impress her cruel father. During their father's long departure the girls hit puberty, and for Pauline it seems like overnight the twins' roles change: Claudine blossoms into a shiny, pretty thing and Pauline, forever the favourite, feels snubbed and like the world has gone crazy because everyone has begun showering love and attention on the forsaken twin.
Of course Claudine, a child so deprived of love, revels in this new attention, craves it, and engages in risky behaviour to attain and keep this facsimile of love and care. This is so particularly heartbreaking because it is such a true, common tale: even my own mother, a woman who I've only ever known to be strong and independent and, at least serviceably, self-caring, admits that for a long time after growing up abused she sought love in the only way she knew how: from men, using the only tools she thought she had: her femininity. With her past revealed, Claudine's nonchalance about things like sleeping with a decent man for shelter when she first arrives in Paris makes more sense. This is the currency she pays with, this is the value she extracts from men.
As children Claudine's behaviour with a puppy could be seen as foreshadowing for her future relationship with men: she locks it away, beats it when it whines, locks it away again to see if it's learnt its lesson, then showers it with affection. Truly though, this dynamic, and the way Claudine is depicted playing with her dolls, is a heartbreaking demonstration of a terrorised child seeking an outlet for the abuse heaped on her. It was really, really heartbreaking to uncover.
The men are another excellent forum for dissemination:
Sebastien is particularly interesting to me because of his Madonna/Whore complex. He loves Pauline for her homeliness, but fucks her sister often, in 'degrading' ways that he wouldn't dare with Pauline. As Pauline embodies Claudine Sebastien no longer values her, finally leaving when he confronts Pauline for cheating on him. He says that he can arrange to fuck Pauline and leave every once in a while if she'd like, but now that she's 'degraded' herself with promiscuity he can't be in a relationship with her, he talks of how he used to see girls dressed slutty in the street and think of his chaste Pauline and feel such pride. So strange, so contradictory, and yet so familiar: how many Johns hate sex workers for providing the very services they seek, how many men expect their partners to be faithful while they step out, how many dudes have slutty girls for practice and marry a Betty Draper for show. I could write a whole thesis on the scene when Pauline first leaves the house dressed as Claudine and encounters various white knights.
I have a lot of conflicting feelings about how sex is depicted in this novel, but I think that's right, because sex is very conflicting and difficult to navigate as a person who's devalued in society based on their gender and their relationship with sex and sexuality.
Sex is largely shown as degrading, transactional, unfulfilling, not sexy, and depressing.
There's also a lot of emphasis on men wanting to "fill all the holes".
My takeaway is that the sex that these characters have is so yucky because the motivations, politics and relationships behind the sex are yucky: fucking a gross man in a position of power over you is yucky, accidentally stumbling into a sex club when you're very much not in the mood would definitely be gross and not arousing, having rough passionless sex with your boyfriend when he thinks you're your sister is definitely complicated and icky.
I think the only good sex in the book is between Nicolas and Pauline. They seem to have a complicated relationship but one that's at least based on a common understanding and possibly mutual respect (or mutual disrespect). Nicolas is the dude character that I have the hardest time nailing down, and I think if there's a rounded male character in this story it's Nicolas. I have many, many issues with his inner monologues about fucking homely girls, about getting hard when Pauline works herself up in a rant, about being able to tell the difference between photos of Claudine and Pauline by whether he gets hard or not, there's a lot of fucking problems. But I don't feel upset that they end up together.
Finally, race is very uncritically broached in this book, and this may be my only real critique of the writing: all of the main characters are white French people. Pauline/Claudine live in a rough, poor neighbourhood, and people of colour dot the background of scenes, women in veils talk and laugh out the window, but they don't speak French so we have no access to their thoughts or personalities.
Policing is mentioned many times, which I find very interesting, but the ultimate conclusion that gets spelled out is that though the police over react and always show out with more force than necessary, the people outnumber them, and a riot could easily break out and overthrow the enforced power structure if someone would ever throw the first stone. Because no real issues of poverty, policing, xenophobia, racism etc are raised, and no person of colour is given more consideration than periphery observations, I read this as a commentary on enforced femininity and the potential for revolt and deconstruction.
Overall I fucking loved this book. I recommend listening to Precious Things by Fiona Apple at least once while reading it.
Also, this is the 2nd book in as many months where I discovered the cover art was created by an artist I adore. Molly Crabapple designed this effective, disturbing cover.
tholmz's review against another edition
dark
slow-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
tacomaven's review against another edition
4.0
Great twin/identity story, would like to read more by this author. Starting lagging at one point, but glad I finished it.