Month: September 2025

The Image of Her by Simone de Beauvoir

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The Image of Her by Simone de Beauvoir

French Fiction

Original title – Les Belles Images

Translator – Lauren Elikin

Source – Personal copy

I’m finally back. This may be a shorter blog than usual, as I read this over a month ago and had intended to review it sooner. However, with all that has happened, it’s just lovely to sit back behind the laptop and write a review of a book. This is the second book from de Beauvoir I have reviewed in recent years. This novel is from later in her writing life. It is hard to capture her life in what is usually my brief introduction to the writer. I have read she had such an impact on both French literature and philosophy, and in that very French way, is also tinged with scandal. I think my next book will be from. Her book will be one of the non-fiction books. Have you read her books or this book, even?

Laurence thinks of the king who turned all he touched to gold, even his daughter, who became a resplendent metal doll. Everything she touches turns into an image. Wood panelling: where urban chic meets the poetry of the forest. Through the leaves she glimpses the water, blackly lapping; a boat passes by, searching the banks with its white gaze. Its light splashes on the windows, brutally illuminating the lovers walking arm in arm, a flash of the past for me, just as I am now the tender image of their future, with the children they might guess are asleep in the bedrooms at the back of the flat. Children will feel as though they’ve climbed into a hollow tree, in their delightful bedroom with natural wood panelling.

An idea worth considering.

Lawrence thinking early on in the book a perfect life !

What I loved about this book, even though it was written in the late sixties, is that the narrative and themes of the book are maybe more relevant now than they were when the book was written. The book focuses on Lawrence, a high-flying female ad executive. From the outside, she seems to have it all. Her architect husband, Jean Charles, is perhaps the most modern and shallow, prioritising style over everything. She also has two children. The book has a turning point, and that is when her ten-year-old daughter, Catherine, points out how unfair she feels their world is to others. This then leads Lawrence to question her life and the choices she has made.  Consumerism, climbing the ladder to the perfect life, often comes at the expense of family time and other priorities. As 2e all know, de Beauvoir was a well-known Feminist. This is a book about what it means to be a woman, a mother, successful, and all that entails.

The merciless gaze of children who refuse to play the

game.

  • I help Papa support us. Thanks to me, you can go to school and cure the sick.
  • And Papa?
  • He builds houses for people who need them. That’s also a way of helping them, you see?

(Horrible lie. But what truth can she tell?) Catherine remained bewildered. Why don’t we give everyone food?

Laurence had again asked questions and Catherine ended up talking about the poster. Because it was the most important thing or to hide something else?

Maybe the poster was the real explanation, after all: the power of the image. Two thirds of the world go hungry, and the face of the little boy, so beautiful, with big, big eyes and some terrible secret behind his closed lips. For me it’s a sign: the sign that the struggle against hunger continues. But Catherine sees a little boy of about her age who is hungry.

When Catherine questions her parents world !

 

As I read this book, one of the things that came to mind most was the book “Perfection” I read earlier this year, which featured a couple living the perfect Instagram life in the 1960s, wanting to be on the pages of the French interior magazine that was the vogue at the time. What difference do children make to this ideal picture, and also when, like Her daughter Catherine, they ask about the world as they question the unfairness in it? Especially now, as the divide in our society continues to grow year after year. We need books like this to be read, reminding us of the class divide at that time. However, this is also a feminist book about the female role in society, and that has significantly changed since the book was written. A high-flying woman like Lawrence would have been rare to know, but it is now much more common. Any, this is a book about the early years of consumerism and can still be read as a question about the perfect life. As I say, it had parallels to Perfection in that regard, but actually followed a different way of looking at breaking the cycle of the ideal life. Have you read either book?

 

Life slowly getting back I’ll be back soon

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Thanks for the lovely comments. Life is slowly getting back to normal here. Amanda will need a further op and is on a slow road to recovery. We had booked a trip away, which we still did, but had to take it easy and came home early. It was just lovely to spend some time together after all that happened. We were in Northumberland, a place we both love, and, of course, we made a small visit to Barter Books, where I picked up a few books that I will add here at a later date. I hadn’t read much the few days after Amanda had her Heart attack, as my mind was a whirl of emotions and just wasn’t in the mood to read. I have since read a few books, including the recent book about Erik Satie and Hisham Matar’s book. A month in Sienna, which had been on my TBR a while. I am currently on a Latin American kick with The Shipyard by Juan Carlos Onetti and A Question of Belonging by Hebe Uhart, one of the most unique voices in Latin American writing. This is a collection of memories from the writer’s life. Anyway, this is just a quick check to thank everyone. I’m intending to return to reviews by the end of next week. I return to work this week, so I will be posting reviews at the end of the week. Hope everyoneios well and has been reading loads recently.

Time out after a shock

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This just a really short post saying I’ll be away for a while as my beloved Amanda had a heart attack yesterday she thankfully survived but obviously reading and the blog are the last things on my mind in the next few days at least .Thankfully I was at home when it happen and we got straight to Sheffield and she had wonderful treatment there so it’s a reminder to keep those you love close as you never know what is around the corner in life.

The Class Reunion by Franz Werfel

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The Class Reunion by Franz Werfel

Austrian fiction

Original title – Der Abituriententag

Translator Bernhard Rest

Source – Review copy

I was kindly sent this book by Eglantyne Books, a small publisher located in the same building as Istros Books. When I was asked if I wanted a copy of this early novella by the Austrian writer Franz Werfel, I said yes. I said yes as he is one of those writers who has been on my too-read list for a long time, in fact, going back to the early days of the blog when I interviewed Peter Stephan Jungk, who had written a biography of Werfel. I was lucky to find an old edition of Songs of Berndette a few years ago, and Penguin has also brought one of his books back into print in recent years. He was on the short list to win the novel prize in 1945, but he unfortunately had a heart attack and died two months before the prize was announced, so he was withdrawn from the list. He, in his time, was good friends with a lot of the outstanding writers of the late 20s and early 30s, Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Robert Musil and the critic Karl Krauxse was a fan of his at the time. The class reunion has been made into a film on a few occasions in both Germany and the Czech Republic. The story follows a weekend in the life of two men.

When Sebastian entered the private room in the Adria Cellar, most of the gentlemen who had resolved upon celebrating the reunion were already present.

A group photo was being passed around, in which an obtuse pyramid of a symmetrically arranged assemblage of youths could be seen. The caption claimed that these young people, who were crouching, sitting and standing in three layers, were the graduates of class Nineteen-Hundred-and-Two of the Imperial-Royal State Gymnasium of Saint Nicholas.

The passage of time had conferred something ridiculous on all the characters in this faded photograph. They either sprouted out of their clothes in long stalks, or they inhabited the outsized suits that housed them like certain cakes that had failed to rise. The most audacious headgear enlivened the rows: rustic hats, sports caps, mariners’ berets. One enterprising head even donned a stiff bowler hat. The indentations that had spoiled the smoothness of that hat in that forgotten hour, made by fingers some twenty-five years ago, could be seen to this day.

At his reunion

The two men at the heart of this book are Judge Ernst Sebastian in the town of Saint Nikolaus, but it is really a thinly veiled version of Prague. Nikolas is the patron saint of the city. He has had a man brought before him for killing several Prostitutes. The two men are left alone as Ernst tries to find out what has happened. But in that instance, he is struck. This man, Franz Adler, was a classmate of his at the private school they went to. The other man, Franz, is beaten down by his life, and it seems to have escaped notice that Earnst is his old school friend. So he cuts the meeting short to continue on Monday. But strangely enough, that weekend he is due to have a school reunion, he talks about Alder with his classmates, but as the evening goes on, we find out more about the Judge’s past. So when he returns on Monday, we will know more of his past, and is this the same Alder he knew?

Oh, how endless and how rich are our boyhood days!

During these endless and rich boyhood days I thought I had forgotten the grave insult that Adler had inflicted on me. That is to say, I no longer thought of it. But deep within my temper, the arrogant words kept on hammering away and grew into a hideous power that longed to be unleashed. This would happen unexpectedly. To this day, it is the same with me: I bear grudges without knowing it. Something that might have been festering in the gloom of my soul for perhaps years will erupt suddenly, surprising myself. And, if I were not a resentful man, would I carry a grudge against myself after all these years?

Weeks passed.

As I already mentioned, when we lined up in our sports lessons I used to stand next to Adler. Already in Vienna I had gained a reputation as a fairly decent gymnast. Here, at Saint Nicholas, which was full of intellectuals and bookworms, I was in a league of my own.

When talking about Adler at the reunion

This book has it all, really. Secrets both in the present and in the past. Identity is the people they seem to be. The memory, how reliable is it at times like this! I can see why it has been made into a film and a tv series in the past. It has a plot that twists here and there, a few things you didn’t expect, as we see behind the mask of those in the upper class and those who have fallen from that class as well. It is also about how we can forget the past until we have a sort of Madeleine moment, when the two men are first left alone, which has a knock-on effect. I was also reminded of an episode of the Tales of the Unexpected Galloping Foxley about a man who sees a man he keeps thinking is his old school Bully Foxley. There is also an air of last year in Marianbad to me, as real events are forgotten or changed in the past, if that makes sense. Anyway, it is a great book to see back in print from a writer who was huge in his day. Have you heard of Werfel or read him ?