peytonaaa 's review for:

Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet

5.0

emotional reflective

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"He wanted to speak of it to Solange, but she had forgotten. To be exact, it was thirteen months since she had announced the violent death of the pig dealer, and nothing had happened. Culafroy saw another supernatural function fade away. A measure of despair was added to the despair which was to accompany him until his death. He did not yet know that the importance of any event in our life lies only in the resonance it sets up within us, only in the degree to which it makes us move toward asceticism. As for him, who receives only shocks, Solange on her rock had not been more inspired than he. In order to show off, she had played a role; but then, though one mystery was thereby disposed of, another and denser one rose up: 'I'm not the only one,' he thinks, 'who can play at not being what they are. So I'm not an exceptional creature.' Then, finally, he suddenly detected one of the facets of feminine glitter. He was disappointed, but above all he was filled with another love and with a certain pity for the too pale, delicate, and distant little girl. Alberto had attracted to him, like a fork of lightning, all the marvelousness of the external. Culafroy told Solange a little about snake fishing, and he knew, like a knowing artist, how to confess and suppress. She was sweeping the ground with a hazel branch. Certain children have in their hands, without anyone's suspecting it, inherent powers of sorcery, and people who are naive are astonished at the perturbations in the laws of animals and families... She listened like a woman to Culafroy's confidences. For a moment she was embarrassed and laughed, and her laugh was such that a skeleton seemed to be frisking about on her close-set teeth and hammering them with sharp blows. In the heart of the countryside she felt herself a prisoner. She had just been bound. Jealous, the girl. She had difficulty finding enough saliva to ask: 'You like him?' and her swallowing was painful, as if she were swallowing a package of pins. Culafroy hesitated to answer. The fairy ran the danger of oblivion. At the moment when it had to be done, when the answer was a 'yes' suspended whole and visible, ready to explode, Solange dropped the hazel wand and in order to pick it up bent down, in a ridiculous position, just as the fatal cry fell, the nuptial 'yes,' with the result that it was mingled with the sound of the sand which she scraped; it was thereby stifled, and the shock to Solange was absorbed. Divine never had any other experience with woman."

Gorgeous book, full of so much love and grace and understanding. Also they made a Sartre introduction that's good :O