Alice, The Suasage by Sophie Jabès
Italian fiction
Original title – Alice , La Saucisse
Translators – Catherine Petit and Paul Buck
Source – personal copy
Well , I’m a little late with getting off on this year’s Woman in Translation Month reviews. Actually, this is the fourth book I have read, so I have three more to review, I chose this as my first book as I think it is a hidden gem, and I always love the choices Dedalus make as a publisher. They have brought some great gems out in the last few years. We have Sophie Jabes, a French writer born in Italy and has lived in several countries. She has worked in both the US and France. This was her debut work and is one of those stories that is quite unique. This is a book about a woman who takes her own fable-like path after a stray comment from her father.
He remained silent for a while and then, with a suddenness that Alice took for lucidity, he adopted a solemn air that terrified her. He took hold of her hand and squeezed it very hard.
“Women, women, women… My dear, you re not Marilyn Monroe, so remember, you must be nice, very nice to men.”
Alice stared at him, horrified, as if an enormous storm had suddenly unleashed itself inside her head.
“I have to be nice to men?”
“Yes, very nice. If you’re a woman, either you’re beautiful, or you’re nice. You don’t have a choice, you understand?”
“No,” Alice whispered. She was shaking.
“It’s very simple.” He took her hands in his again. “Are you cold?” He rubbed her fingers absentmindedly. “You are not beautiful, so you must be … nice. I can’t find any other word. I mean very nice to men
The comment from her father that changes the course of the book.
Alice lives with some nuns. Her father and mother are divorced. Her father now lives with a Croatian woman and visits her infrequently, usually when they meet; she also meets her brother, a blind street artist. She feels the men’s eyes on her as she heads out on the street and feels she is very attractive to men. But there is a stray comment from her father when she meets him, and he has just fallen out with his lover. He tells Alice that she is no Marylin Monroe, so she must be nice to men. She tries to seek solace, but a. conversation with her mother is cut short as her mother is after an Asian man like her father. She is caught up in her own world, not her daughter’s life. This single comment is like a dagger through her heart and how she feels about herself. So the next day, her world is changed, and she seeks comfort, which she finds in food. We get a description of food she starts eating in large amounts, especially an ice cream cornet, which she delights in, as well as the tart and acid of raspberry and lemon ice creams. She then starts to change and put weight on as she sees. Even now, men are looking at her, but she continues to abuse her body.
Alice devoured all voraciously, forgetting for a moment the gaping wound she was dressing with provolone, parmesan and strained ricotta. Nothing satisfied her. Neither the tramezzini with ham, nor those with hard-boiled eggs, nor the slices of bread covered in mascarpone, or Nutella, nor the gnocchi with rosemary, nor those with tomato sauce. Each time she tried a new flavour, she hoped to find an answer to her anguish. Wanting to fill the intense emptiness in her being with penne and pappardelle
Next day she starts her eating and her is some of what see eats.
This is a tale about how we view ourselves and how a single comment can change a person’s life and how they view themselves as people. It has a fable-like description. It is about body image and how it can be twisted. Then there is the toxic nature of her parents toward her as a person. Her sorrow is drawn in the food she eats and the food is so well described the pizza ice creams jumped of the page. There is a hint of her descent into a world of food, the sexual nature of food, and her being caught in a Kafka-like descent into a world controlled by food. I found this a book that leaps off the page as we see Alice, whose body has changed, but in the later stages of the book, is starting to affect her health. A gem of a book, one of those that has a bit of this, and that seems like a book about a girl on the cusp of being a sexual object to men at that start until she is burnt, and she then sees food as her only escape from being nice to men. Have you read this or any other books from the Dedalus short series?
