Sophie DivryRezensionen
Autor von The Library of Unrequited Love
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The book tells the story of M.A. from her birth to her death. Born to parents who owned the local garage with her father often working as a mechanic, her early life is told in staccato snippets, memories that don't provide the whole picture but highlights and just enough to make her a little more intriguing; someone with a temper, enjoying the freedom of your parents going out and leaving you on your own, answering back in class but above all bored.
And so life goes on - university, marriage, work , children, work and an affair, menopause and the need for counselling growing older and finally relaxing with grandchildren. It's a perfectly conventional journey through life and one which M.A. rails against for most of her life, always waiting, waiting for the BIG thing which probably couldn't be described. Is this why we are so inisistent that nowadays we record our gratitude for the little things, taking pleasure where we are, because the big, exciting things may never happen?
The book constantly steps forward and imagines what might happen and then steps back again and continues with what did happen, that place where we imagine all the pathways open to us at various junctures but then this is what happens. It seems to be constantly saying stay in the present, don't imagine too much because you will only be disappointed. We get a wonderful, pages long description of preparing for friends to come over for a meal, the anxiety that everything goes well and that the food is good with a couple of lines and minutes when you relax. It has all gone well but then you have to start on the tidying up.
You went up the stairs, you felt rather heavy, rather sad as you closed your eyes, kissing the man at your side who was already asleep. It was only a meal, after all, even if it had been good.
p127
So even doing something well doesn't bring about any changes. The book is written with a lightness and the translation is good enough to show the changes in how we speak over the decades but how depressing to be trapped in a life and roles that bore you and finding yourself unable to shake out of it. The boredom was never communicated and so nothing changed. The only thing is, I bet many of us can see elements of our own lives lived through M.A.
The novel is in three parts: first part leads us to M.A's marriage to the stable, if unexciting insurance agent Francois; the second part, which is the core of the novel, centres around M.A.'s affair with one of her bosses, an escapade which promises relief from the ordinary but unsurprisingly leaves an aftertaste of sordidness; in the third and final part, the boredom becomes tinged with a sense of panic with the onset of old age.
Divry has a sharp sense of observation and M.A.'s story is told against the backdrop of the French middle-class as it evolved over the past decades. The novel also has its stylistic quirks. It is conveyed, throughout, in second-person narration. This can easily sound awkward, but works surprisingly well in Alison Anderson's deft translation. There are also moments when the narrator seems to adopt a bird's eye view, as if society were a colony of ants under the scrutiny of a biologist or as if the reader were an alien being brought face-to-face with human idiosyncrasies. I have in mind, in particular, a weird 2 - 3-page "encyclopedic" passage about cars, and our fixation with them.
These two points however lead me to my reservations about the novel. It is easy to pity M.A. and see her as a product of a materialistic, male-dominated society. Given the author's feminist credentials it could also well be that we are actually meant to take this view. Yet, rather than making us root for M.A., the objective, almost clinical perspective adopted by Divry makes it difficult to feel sympathy for the protagonist herself. Society is criticized, and often harshly, but M.A.'s seeming lack of interest in the feelings of the persons surrounding her does not earn her many brownie points either (at least, with this particular reader). When this sensation sets in, the second-person narrative starts to feel strident, accusative. Then again, Flaubert's masterpiece is often subjected to the same sort of criticism. Even in this regard, Madame Bovary of the Suburbs does what it states on the cover.
3.5 *
This electronic version of the novel was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review
So one morning a (very opinionated) librarian comes to work & finds a library patron that somehow managed to get locked in overnight & slept down in the basement. Cue the verbal diaorrhea lol!
This rather entertaining book is a short witty dialogue of the librarian who works in the geography section. This book is like having a conversation with a bookish person with ADHD lol! Bit of an oxymoron I know but bear with me, eg, 'I'd rather be down here peacefully than having to spend my whole time working alongside the snobs upstairs. When I see the kind of books they have to put on display every day. The books that get published these days, well, there's a bit of everything, but generally they're not worth reading. And if you spend your time with bad books, it doesn't improve your intelligence. So no surprises there. Have you never thought about it? What kind of literature is going to be produced in a society where there are no wars or epidemics or revolutions? I'll tell you what: badly written novels about nice girls & boys falling in love, who make each other suffer without meaning to, & spend all their time crying & saying they're sorry. Ridiculous'.
And it's pretty much like that for the whole book lol! Which is ok because it is very short & can be read in one sitting. Another plus since there are no chapters or paragraphs. It's a one sided conversation in the true sense of the phrase! But luckily it's a rather entertaining one! :O)
The novel is in three parts: first part leads us to M.A's marriage to the stable, if unexciting insurance agent Francois; the second part, which is the core of the novel, centres around M.A.'s affair with one of her bosses, an escapade which promises relief from the ordinary but unsurprisingly leaves an aftertaste of sordidness; in the third and final part, the boredom becomes tinged with a sense of panic with the onset of old age.
Divry has a sharp sense of observation and M.A.'s story is told against the backdrop of the French middle-class as it evolved over the past decades. The novel also has its stylistic quirks. It is conveyed, throughout, in second-person narration. This can easily sound awkward, but works surprisingly well in Alison Anderson's deft translation. There are also moments when the narrator seems to adopt a bird's eye view, as if society were a colony of ants under the scrutiny of a biologist or as if the reader were an alien being brought face-to-face with human idiosyncrasies. I have in mind, in particular, a weird 2 - 3-page "encyclopedic" passage about cars, and our fixation with them.
These two points however lead me to my reservations about the novel. It is easy to pity M.A. and see her as a product of a materialistic, male-dominated society. Given the author's feminist credentials it could also well be that we are actually meant to take this view. Yet, rather than making us root for M.A., the objective, almost clinical perspective adopted by Divry makes it difficult to feel sympathy for the protagonist herself. Society is criticized, and often harshly, but M.A.'s seeming lack of interest in the feelings of the persons surrounding her does not earn her many brownie points either (at least, with this particular reader). When this sensation sets in, the second-person narrative starts to feel strident, accusative. Then again, Flaubert's masterpiece is often subjected to the same sort of criticism. Even in this regard, Madame Bovary of the Suburbs does what it states on the cover.
3.5 *
This electronic version of the novel was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review
odd and not hugely stimulating, but amusing. one paragraph over 90 pages. could make an interesting one woman play.
I totally enjoyed the never-ending paragraph!
Also fun was the Dewey Decimal System, listening for steps in the basement, general library knowledge,
the people changing with the seasons, and the librarian's oddly contradictory tones and opinions.
Less impressive was her hopeless attitude toward her own life and future.
If only she would say "Martin, that chocolate smells SO good - could you please share a small piece?!?" -
the action would have picked up!
It took me a while to get into this book as the writing is unusual, spare and with a dispassionate tone that gives a very precise cadence. MA is not a sympathetic figure at all but the book is surprisingly sympathetic.
“On the bus, I see all these zombies. One with his iPod, another on his mobile, number three fiddling with his tablet. None of these morons reads a book on the bus. Never. That would be too much effort. And then you expect them to come round here looking for education? No, not a chance, just look at them, brains switched off.”
I read books when I'm comfortable or in the mood for it. So when you see me fiddling with my tablet, it doesn't mean I am a zombie moron whose brain switched off. I could also be reading an ebook. Either way, you shouldn't judge people just because they are not reading a book or something.
I get what the author meant but the persona comes across as judgmental and it's like implying that readers are better than everyone else? ugh.
The book is a monologue of a traditional librarian. If it's in real life, I might smile at her and go elsewhere or tell her to shut her pie hole. She rambles a lot. I like the information she gives but I hate how she can be a smug at times. Well, it is a book so it is okay. The idea is refreshing but it doesn't give much appeal to me. I somewhat pity the librarian because of her rants and her unrequited love. Nothing more.
I wanted to describe the battle between order and disorder, between love and bitterness, between conservatism and revolution. Shouldn't literature always try to answer these two questions: what does it mean to be human? What is life? -- Sophie Divry
Here is a short fiction about books and book-lovers, libraries and librarians, infatuation and infuriation. And how can one not be drawn by a novel with this particular title? Especially one which has been reduced in a sale, with a recommendation from the bookshop assistant that he'd only taken a short while to read it? (Perhaps that's why it was at a bargain price: it had been 'pre-read'.)
Other than long-dead authors there's only one name in this book: Martin. Martin is a serious scholar using the facilities of some municipal library in the Paris region, ensconcing himself in the Geography and Town Planning section (Dewey class 910) located in the basement. He is lusted after by a frustrated spinster librarian who is fascinated by his neck, like the spine of a book. On this occasion she has discovered a hapless reader who while asleep had been locked in by mistake overnight, and takes the opportunity before the building officially opens to the public by subjecting him to a rant. A rant which for approaching ninety pages is one long paragraph.
What topic doesn't she harangue the reader with? (The anonymous reader, of course, is Everywoman and Everyman, you and me.) Pettifogging administrators and politicians; the uses and abuses of the Dewey Decimal Classification System; the French Revolution and existentialist philosophers; library furniture and holidays abroad; Eugène Morel and the design of libraries; the force of nature that was Maupassant and the confidence tricks of Balzac; the declining standards in the quality of books and the proliferation of vacuous authors; the public using the library to keep warm in the winter, to write comments in the margins of books or to pick up the opposite sex (shelfmark 306.7 is "a sure-fire magnet for boys", where sex manuals can be found). And so on and so on.
And Martin? He's apparently unaware he's an object of lust: involved in researching Peasant revolts in the Poitiers region in the reign of Louis XV he's now taken to gratuitously parading his floozy in front of our librarian, we're told. Unrequited love is the idée fixe she returns to again and again, Martin this, Martin that. And occasionally the man who dumped her all those years ago. Just before she lets her anonymous captive go she confesses, "I'm truly sorry for what happened. ... [S]ometimes in this prison, with all the books, something's got to give." But her last words are a cri de coeur: "What's the point [...] if Martin doesn't come?"
This spoken stream of consciousness if by turns funny and sad, angry and accepting. You can imagine this poor woman, no better than the unfortunate reader locked in overnight, herself a prisoner in a gaol of her own making; like some pre-Revolutionary Bastille inmate with access to books but no life outside she can only obsess about the vagaries and imbecilities that surround her in her voluntary confinement. Anyone who has been in a dead-end job with advancement curtailed by their own refusal to play the system will recognise her predicament.
Helpful endnotes ("exclusive to Waterstones" we're told) inform us that the original title of the book in French is La cote 400: shelfmark 400 is the Languages section, which has been relocated to the 800s where it has been subsumed under Literature. Our librarian is incensed about this, and no wonder: but of course it is a perfect metaphor for this verbal tirade unleashed on the unsuspecting reader. (That's you and me, as you know.)
As the author says in the endnotes, "What does it mean to be human? What is life?" Our poor librarian, try as she might, doesn't have the answers; and nor do we, really.
http://wp.me/s2oNj1-400
Less a novella than a short story. Less a short story than a stream of consciousness that barely pauses for breath.
The Librarian opens up one morning to find a man sleeping who was accidently locked in overnight. She then proceeds to talk at him, 19 to the dozen, hopping from one subject to another, without pause, but always circling back to the mysterious Martin who is the unrequited love of the title.
No chapters, no paragraphs. Really quite difficult to read unless you can spend the time to read it in one sitting as it really doesn't have any logical pause points where you can put it down and return, but that's what I had to do and that's possibly why I found it a little difficult to read.
Sólo le queda, pues, la literatura. Para elevarse, dice ella. Los libros, los buenos libros. Y quizá, también, los buenos lectores, que van a la biblioteca en busca de algo más que calefacción o aire acondicionado, y que dan vida a las grandes historias, como el breve monólogo de esta mujer insignificante, que relata su desencanto con acritud y humor. ¿O es un diálogo? ¿O acaso la pregunta tiene sentido?
Un texto precioso que, desde luego, reclama todas las lecturas del mundo. La primera novela publicada de Sophie Divry, que tiene treinta años, vive en Lyon y ojalá escriba y publique mucho más.
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Alguien | 28 weitere Rezensionen | Oct 1, 2014 |
Alguien | 28 weitere Rezensionen | Oct 1, 2014 | A burned-out librarian going in to work before opening the library discovers a patron who fell asleep downstairs and gives a monologue about all that is good and terrible about her experiences.
I am a librarian and love books and readers, and I really wanted to love this book. But. I found myself really frustrated with this poor lady who at once seems to love and hate her job, who wants to connect readers with a good book but also can't stand that bestsellers and DVDs are what gets people into libraries. She feels under-appreciated and ignored. Okay, all well and good, and I can understand her frustration at times. My philosophy of library service is rather different from hers, however, and I generally get satisfaction out of my job. I did enjoy reading about library service in France and comparing/contrasting in my head with what I do, and the training I needed versus what the character had. I could see it appealing to certain readers who enjoy thinking about the lofty goals of literature and wouldn't mind one long monologue (which, granted, makes it really easy to read in one sitting), but it's not one I can wholeheartedly recommend to everyone.
In a stream of consciousness monologue, we are treated to the story of this woman’s life, loves, and losses. Life hasn’t been particularly kind to this woman. It’s rather overlooked her. She's slightly brittle and wary of further disappointment. But she does love books, and not only books.
Our narrator has lots of opinions, which she freely shares. For example she doesn’t travel, ‘because Napoleon has always been there first.’
Don’t expect much of a plot, it's a vignette. One woman’s view on the world she inhabits, where hope burns eternal.
Despite it’s brevity, and lack of plot, our librarian narrator is quite a fully fleshed character, and I was left hoping everything would all turn out right for her in the end.
Nina Jon is the author of the newly released Magpie Murders, a series of short murder mysteries with a Cluedo-esque element.
She is also the author of the Jane Hetherington's Adventures in Detection crime and mystery series, about private detective Jane Hetherington.
The lack of paragraphs gave me a feeling of being trapped inside the book - which is of course the feeling the librarian in her library room has, but even she pauses to pursue other trains of thought. Paragraphs at those sections would have been useful to the reader.
The cliche of course is obvious: a love-sick librarian with a secret passion for an unobtainable student and a series of deep-set grudges to reveal, and there were times when the cliche was simply overwhelming and I thought about giving up. Even in a book with a mere 96 pages. However, the last five or six pages are simply brilliant and well worth ploughing through the first 90 or so to get there - the ending is a tour de force of surreal and bitter brilliance, and I only wish this sort of writing had started a lot earlier on.
Som tur är känner jag inte igen allt från min egen vardag som bibliotekarie. Mitt arbete är betydligt roligare och mer stimulerande, och min arbetsplats inte alls så hierarkisk som bokens.
Minnesvärda citat om bibliotek:
”Att kunna orientera sig på bibliotek är att bemästra kulturen, det vill säga världen i dess helhet.” (s. 17)
”För vad symboliserar egentligen dessa utbredda jättearmar dignande av bokhyllor, de mjuka heltäckningsmattorna som vi går på, den rofyllda dämpade tystnaden, den behagliga inomhustemperaturen, det diskret vänligt vakande ögat? (---) Men det är ju uppenbart: att stiga in på ett bibliotek innebär helt enkelt att återvända till moderlivet… Ja, biblioteket ger oss liksom mamma en förtrollad puss så att allt går över. Olyckligt kär? Folkskygg? Utvecklingspessimist? Huvudvärk? Sömnsvårigheter? Matsmältningsproblem? Liktornar? Tro mig, det finns inte en enda av dessa åkommor som inte kan lindras med hjälp av ett biblioteksbesök.” (s.71)
«Despierte, ¿qué hace ahí tumbado? La biblioteca no abre hasta dentro de dos horas, no debería estar aquí. Esto es el colmo: ahora encierran a los lectores en mi sótano. ¡Lo que no me hayan hecho en esta casa! No hace falta gritar, no es culpa mía, oiga… Pero yo le conozco, usted es uno de los habituales. Como se pasa aquí todo el santo día, alguna anoche tenía que quedarse. No, no se marche, ya que está aquí, écheme una mano. Busco un libro para los de arriba, “El existencialismo es un humanismo”, esa historia de Sartre; se les ha perdido aquí abajo, búsquelo en las estanterías, gracias. ¿Cómo? ¿No me reconoce? Pues trabajo todos los días en esta sala. Por lo visto, paso totalmente inadvertida. Nadie me ve, ése es mi problema. Incluso en la calle, cuando me empujan, me dicen “Uy, perdone, no la había visto”. La mujer invisible, soy la mujer invisible, la responsable de la sección de geografía. Pues claro, ahora cae en la cuenta, naturalmente. Ah, ése es, muchas gracias, qué rápido. “El existencialismo es un humanismo” no pinta nada en mi sótano, aquí no tenemos nada que ver con la filosofía. Eso es cosa de los intelectuales de la planta baja. Voy a devolvérselo, se pondrán contentos, pues anda que no hace tiempo que lo están buscando. Ya ve lo útil que me resulta usted. De todos modos no tengo permitido abrirle la puerta, habría que llamar al servicio de seguridad y resultaría demasiado peligroso. Pues claro que es peligroso, sería lo nunca visto, algo inaudito. Nunca hay que llamar la atención en una biblioteca. Llamar la tención ya es molestar. Se va a quedar conmigo mientras preparo la sala de lectura. Todavía me quedan libros por clasificar. Ya que es usted tan eficiente, sáqueme todos los libros de geografía que los lectores han colado en la sección de historia. Venga, y no se queje: clasificar, colocar, no molestar, ésa es toda mi vida, ya ve. Meter libros en las estanterías y sacarlos, el cuento de nunca acabar. No parece divertido, ¿eh? Pero es lo que hay. Porque, para colocar un libro, ni siquiera necesito mirar el nombre del autor. Me basta con leer los números apuntados aquí, en la etiqueta pegada en el lomo, e intercalarlos a continuación de los que tienen la misma signatura. Eso es todo. Y llevo veinticinco años en este oficio, veinticinco años con el mismo principio inmutable» (págs. 15-17).
Un texto crítico con la profesión bibliotecaria, con los hábitos culturales y lectores de hoy, con los clásicos. Es una mujer angustiada y fracasada que Sophie Divry convierte es una excelente narradora
«Que la entrada a la biblioteca sea menos intimidatoria. Aliar placer y cultura para que la cultura sea un placer y blablablá. Pero todo es una farsa, un embuste, una manipulación. La cultura no es un placer. La cultura es un esfuerzo permanente del ser para escapar de su vil condición de primate subcivilizado. Pero mire, si solo sacan deuvedés, solo deuvedés. ¿Acaso desean aprender aunque sea un cachito de verdad sobre el mundo? No, solo vienen a divertirse, a distraerse, y esos zombis ni siquiera se quitan los auriculares. Me enseñan el carné de lector en el mostrador de préstamo como enseñarían la tarjeta de crédito a la cajera del supermercado» págs. 65-66).
Para acabar. La edición de Blackie Books es bonita: en cartoné, un papel agradable, unos tipos adecuados… Se podría mejorar si los cuadernillos estuvieran cosidos y no solo pegados.
--
Divry, Sophie (1980?- ). Signatura 400 / Sophie Divry ; traducción de María Enguix Tercero. -- [1ª ed.]. -- Barcelona : Blackie Books, 2011. -- 106 p., [1 h.] ; 22 cm. -- (Blackie books ; 20). -- Tít. orig.: La cote 400. -- ISBN 978-84-938745-4-4
I. Enguix Tercero, María, trad. II. Título. III. Serie.
821.133.1-31"20"
J'ai trouvé que l'introduction du monologue était maladroite et je n'ai pas pu m'affranchir de cette impression lors de la lecture.
La description du système de classement Dewey était intéressante: son ethnocentrisme, la hiérarchie qu'il peut créer au sein de certaines bibliothèques ...
L'obsession qu'elle développe pour un usager est tirée par les cheveux et ridicule.
1 electrice | 28 weitere Rezensionen | Aug 14, 2013 |
electrice | 28 weitere Rezensionen | Aug 14, 2013 | Diese Seite verwendet Cookies für unsere Dienste, zur Verbesserung unserer Leistungen, für Analytik und (falls Sie nicht eingeloggt sind) für Werbung. Indem Sie LibraryThing nutzen, erklären Sie dass Sie unsere Nutzungsbedingungen und Datenschutzrichtlinie gelesen und verstanden haben. Die Nutzung unserer Webseite und Dienste unterliegt diesen Richtlinien und Geschäftsbedingungen.
"As for men, I've given upon them. It's just impossible in a place like this, impossible. It's not exactly the sticks, but if you're a sensitive, cultivated soul like me, it's...well, it's very provincial. I need wider horizon. So, men, no, that's all over. Love, for me, is something I find in books. I read a lot, it's comforting. You've never alone if you live surrounded by books. They lift my spirit. The main thing is to be uplifted."
Who can argue with her? "When I'm reading, I'm never alone, I have a conversation with the book. It can be very intimate. Perhaps you know this feeling yourself? The sense that you're having an intellectual exchange with the author, following his or her train of thought, and you can accompany each other for weeks on end. When I'm reading, I can forget everything, sometimes I don't even hear the phone."