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A review by seahorsemojinow
Sphinx by Anne Garréta
1.0
Wow! I got this book off a display of "LGBTQ Books" at a big bookstore in New York, and I could not be more disappointed. There will be extreme spoilers in this review, but I think that's fine because you should absolutely not read this book.
The like, conceit of this book or whatever, its Oulipan Exercise, is that Garréta doesn't gender her main character or her main character's love interest. Sphinx is described as a book where "gender doesn't matter" - a concept that, theoretically, I could get behind, but what I read is just so fucking far from actually achieving that.
Sphinx was written in French, and in the translator's note at the end, she says that the narrator "walks, overtakes, passes, is dragged along, is led places, follows, hurries, rushes, reaches [...] Never does the narrator simply go anywhere [...] for the narrator to say that they simply went anywhere would require revealing his or her gender. Sphinx is powerful because it refuses to do just that." I don't think that makes Sphinx powerful! I think it just demonstrates that French is a silly fucking language!
Sphinx utterly fails at subverting gender in any real way. The narrator is a pompous, self-centered [white] intellectual, and their annoying, insistent prose is so un-self-conscious about their own pretention that I could not help but conclude that this character was written with a man in mind. Maybe that says more about my concepts of gender than Garréta's, but contrasted with A***'s depiction as almost entirely grounded within the expressions of their body, and how they were only interested in their own looks, and how possessive the narrator was of them, and it was just abundantly clear throughout the book that this was nowhere near an "LGBTQ" love story.
Besides that, gender is present incessantly in the rest of the book - and what's worthwhile about writing an ungendered love story if you're going to have misogynistic biases littered throughout the rest of the text?
Which brings me to the main awful bit of this book - it was enormously racist! A*** is Black, and any time the narrator talks about them, it's "delicious" "dark skinned" this and "caramel" that. If I have to read the word "dusky" one more time, I'm going to throw something out a window. The narrator visits A***'s family, and describes the impact of the family's affectations on their English as "stigmata." Harlem's "misery" becomes a metaphorical dead body that the narrator feels they are carrying! I know that Sphinx was originally written in like, the 80's or something, but this is inexcusable.
So, then, A*** dies! Tragically and suddenly. And the narrator grieves like ~no one has ever grieved before~, as if they have discovered what grieving is, actually. And they literally say things like, A***'s hips were what they loved most about them. They can never love again, though, because their love for A*** was so Pure and True. Some years later, they get word that A***'s mother is dying and they fly to New York to be her sole comforter on her death bed, and to pay for her to be treated better by this Harlem hospital. [The narrator is inexplicably wealthy - they dropped out of college to be a DJ, then went back to school, and now their only occupation is the occasional lecture to "small" and "specialized" audiences - not vocations that denote money to blow on international travel and spruced up medical care in the US! But maybe they're just wealthy because they're white.] The narrator is the only person with A***'s mom, and Garréta waxes poetic for like 10 pages about how lonely this tearful "black momma" is. The narrator is present for her death, considers themself instrumental in her ability to peacefully release, and then notifies her family [!!! her family!!! some more "tearful mommas" - her sisters!!! Where were they before???]. The narrator directs her family [!!!] to her apartment to take what they like - the narrator themself has already removed what they want. That is to say, things they assumed the family [!!!] wouldn't want, because they were only worth sentimental value [!!!].
To finish it all off, the narrator is murdered by Black men in Harlem! Yep! That's the end of the book! Honestly, that was the only good part, I was like finally, this asshole is fucking dead!
Is this book supposed to be satire? There's like, two explanations, right? One, that this character is so absurd and repulsive because they are satire (in which case, Satire should have a point, and this book does Not), or! That Garréta is a racist white French person who was writing in the 80's which seems the more likely event.
Anyway, at the end, the translator claims (in 2015) that "excluding this translation, there does not yet exist a genderless love story written in English." Emma Ramadan, hats off to you because that's a bold fucking claim!!! @ Friends, can any of you rec me some genderless love stories?
The like, conceit of this book or whatever, its Oulipan Exercise, is that Garréta doesn't gender her main character or her main character's love interest. Sphinx is described as a book where "gender doesn't matter" - a concept that, theoretically, I could get behind, but what I read is just so fucking far from actually achieving that.
Sphinx was written in French, and in the translator's note at the end, she says that the narrator "walks, overtakes, passes, is dragged along, is led places, follows, hurries, rushes, reaches [...] Never does the narrator simply go anywhere [...] for the narrator to say that they simply went anywhere would require revealing his or her gender. Sphinx is powerful because it refuses to do just that." I don't think that makes Sphinx powerful! I think it just demonstrates that French is a silly fucking language!
Sphinx utterly fails at subverting gender in any real way. The narrator is a pompous, self-centered [white] intellectual, and their annoying, insistent prose is so un-self-conscious about their own pretention that I could not help but conclude that this character was written with a man in mind. Maybe that says more about my concepts of gender than Garréta's, but contrasted with A***'s depiction as almost entirely grounded within the expressions of their body, and how they were only interested in their own looks, and how possessive the narrator was of them, and it was just abundantly clear throughout the book that this was nowhere near an "LGBTQ" love story.
Besides that, gender is present incessantly in the rest of the book - and what's worthwhile about writing an ungendered love story if you're going to have misogynistic biases littered throughout the rest of the text?
Which brings me to the main awful bit of this book - it was enormously racist! A*** is Black, and any time the narrator talks about them, it's "delicious" "dark skinned" this and "caramel" that. If I have to read the word "dusky" one more time, I'm going to throw something out a window. The narrator visits A***'s family, and describes the impact of the family's affectations on their English as "stigmata." Harlem's "misery" becomes a metaphorical dead body that the narrator feels they are carrying! I know that Sphinx was originally written in like, the 80's or something, but this is inexcusable.
So, then, A*** dies! Tragically and suddenly. And the narrator grieves like ~no one has ever grieved before~, as if they have discovered what grieving is, actually. And they literally say things like, A***'s hips were what they loved most about them. They can never love again, though, because their love for A*** was so Pure and True. Some years later, they get word that A***'s mother is dying and they fly to New York to be her sole comforter on her death bed, and to pay for her to be treated better by this Harlem hospital. [The narrator is inexplicably wealthy - they dropped out of college to be a DJ, then went back to school, and now their only occupation is the occasional lecture to "small" and "specialized" audiences - not vocations that denote money to blow on international travel and spruced up medical care in the US! But maybe they're just wealthy because they're white.] The narrator is the only person with A***'s mom, and Garréta waxes poetic for like 10 pages about how lonely this tearful "black momma" is. The narrator is present for her death, considers themself instrumental in her ability to peacefully release, and then notifies her family [!!! her family!!! some more "tearful mommas" - her sisters!!! Where were they before???]. The narrator directs her family [!!!] to her apartment to take what they like - the narrator themself has already removed what they want. That is to say, things they assumed the family [!!!] wouldn't want, because they were only worth sentimental value [!!!].
To finish it all off, the narrator is murdered by Black men in Harlem! Yep! That's the end of the book! Honestly, that was the only good part, I was like finally, this asshole is fucking dead!
Is this book supposed to be satire? There's like, two explanations, right? One, that this character is so absurd and repulsive because they are satire (in which case, Satire should have a point, and this book does Not), or! That Garréta is a racist white French person who was writing in the 80's which seems the more likely event.
Anyway, at the end, the translator claims (in 2015) that "excluding this translation, there does not yet exist a genderless love story written in English." Emma Ramadan, hats off to you because that's a bold fucking claim!!! @ Friends, can any of you rec me some genderless love stories?