| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
What goes through your mind, how do you begin to make sense of things, when your husband goes out for a few minutes to buy bread--and never returns? Marie Darrieussecq's first novel, translated as Pig Tales and a huge bestseller in her native France, was a surreal account of a woman slowly being transformed into a sow. Her new book details the inner transformations undergone by a woman unaccountably left by her husband: what both novels share is an acute sense of the place of women in modern society while remaining fastidiously accurate to the sensibilities of their protagonists. Both novels ask questions about the degree to which identity is grounded in the perception of others, in the mirrored symbiosis of relationships.
What really sets Darrieussecq apart from many other writers is her attention to language--although My Phantom Husband is a short book, it invites considered reading--the closely focused prose allows the reader to track the micro-climates of anxiety, fear, listlessness, shock, hallucination and despair (not to mention inadvertent humour) as they affect the mind of the narrator. Darrieussecq renders unsparingly the meandering shifts and bifurcations of the traumatised self: like the edges of fractal curves, thoughts spool and fracture outwards or converge on some strange attractor--everything is in the emotional detail, the tidal oscillation between hyper-sensitised and desensitised states.
Echoing the previous book, there is a hint of surreality here: the undefined location of the book is some curiously hybrid postcolonial landscape and Darrieussecq subtly sets up reverberations between inner mental terrain and outward place, hinting at other possible readings of the book's psychic drama. Finally though it is the immediate impression that is so affecting in what is, quite simply, an extraordinary and powerful study of loss. --Burhan Tufail --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"'A work of absolute genius and, quite simply, the best book I have ever read for The Bookseller.' Rob Cassy, The Bookseller 'After the grotesque comedy of Pig Tales, Darrieussecq has taken a step further, refined her talent, and produced one of the best books of the year.' Alex Clark, Guardian"
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.co.uk.
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
A Novel of Interior Space
3 April 2012
Format:Hardcover
The narrator's husband returns from the office and, as usual, the narrator failed to buy a baguette for their dinner. "The nearest bakery is on the other side of the boulevard: it takes forever to cross." So, as usual, off goes the husband to buy the missing bread. Down the five flights of stairs, across that boulevard... While she waits, our narrator calls her mother, warning her that, as usual, she will need to hang-up the phone when he returns. But instead, her mother eventually hangs up, and the narrator realizes that her husband is delayed, is seriously delayed. And eventually she acknowledges that he is missing.
Nothing else really happens in the book, yet it is filled with the ruminations of our narrator as she attempts to live with the consequences of this event. In the endless hours of the ensuing days her mind ventures far and wide in an attempt to accept, understand, internalize the enormity of this event, this new void in her life. "But the space he left empty, a yawning hole in the universe, and that was the scandal that no law known to me could describe, make up for, or punish."
The only characters in the book besides the narrator are her best-friend, mother and mother-in-law. The last of these is unable to fathom the disappearance of her beloved only son, and this hurt and betrayal is focused on our narrator in a manner neither fully understand. This event has thrown them together, and apart. So the only other people to intersect the life of our narrator are her mother and best friend. Both grow tired of the narrator's remoteness and essentially order her to get on with her life. She hears and understands their commands, but is untouched by them. She is simply waiting, outside the events of everyday life, living instead within the confines of her brain. "Waiting - for what? A sugar cube, my walk, someone to pat me with an outstretched hand?" They are vibrant with everyday life, she is adrift in an interior world which does not intersect with the efficiency of these two women. "I was a graft of monkey and dog, no longer able to arch my back enough to hoist myself above the chimeras."
This interior world is lyrically described, but then she anchors the story with a few facts, they simply don't add up. The husband is a real estate broker for new developments who despite simply leaving one day without a single trace has an office that continues to function without him, and continues to bring in more than sufficient amounts of money...all this without employees. That level of the novel, though relatively inconsequential, simply isn't believable. But in general the author does an excellent job of exploring a mind set adrift by events.
Nothing else really happens in the book, yet it is filled with the ruminations of our narrator as she attempts to live with the consequences of this event. In the endless hours of the ensuing days her mind ventures far and wide in an attempt to accept, understand, internalize the enormity of this event, this new void in her life. "But the space he left empty, a yawning hole in the universe, and that was the scandal that no law known to me could describe, make up for, or punish."
The only characters in the book besides the narrator are her best-friend, mother and mother-in-law. The last of these is unable to fathom the disappearance of her beloved only son, and this hurt and betrayal is focused on our narrator in a manner neither fully understand. This event has thrown them together, and apart. So the only other people to intersect the life of our narrator are her mother and best friend. Both grow tired of the narrator's remoteness and essentially order her to get on with her life. She hears and understands their commands, but is untouched by them. She is simply waiting, outside the events of everyday life, living instead within the confines of her brain. "Waiting - for what? A sugar cube, my walk, someone to pat me with an outstretched hand?" They are vibrant with everyday life, she is adrift in an interior world which does not intersect with the efficiency of these two women. "I was a graft of monkey and dog, no longer able to arch my back enough to hoist myself above the chimeras."
This interior world is lyrically described, but then she anchors the story with a few facts, they simply don't add up. The husband is a real estate broker for new developments who despite simply leaving one day without a single trace has an office that continues to function without him, and continues to bring in more than sufficient amounts of money...all this without employees. That level of the novel, though relatively inconsequential, simply isn't believable. But in general the author does an excellent job of exploring a mind set adrift by events.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Genius or Gibberish?
27 Jun 2002
Format:Hardcover
Is this a brilliant work of fiction or 150 pages of gibberish? This little book can be a tough read. Is it because of its French origin and something is lost in the translation (the French are so different from us), or is it because as a man reading it I missed the point of the female writers nuances? I have not decided yet. From the description on the cover I was expecting the story of a desparate search for a missing person. But the action (if you could call it action) takes place in the narrators fractured mind, and half way through the book you begin to question if there ever was a husband. Maybe a second reading would bring more insight into the character. If you are looking for a book with a good plot, action, dialogue and character development, look elsewhere.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
one stiff novel to read
26 April 2000
Format:Hardcover
As a matter of fact,this is not a very interesting book for all readers.(pig tale would be an entertaining one).On account of the fact that in this story,lengthy part was utililised by the author to portray the transformation of the mind of the wife whose husband has been missing. At the very beginning,she's so extremely worried about her husband.But then she became anguished,disgruntled,and even had some visions not real after she realised she can't find out where her husband is.As everyone knows,it's more unbearable to us to be abandonned by our close relatives than to know they were dead,and this reflects the reality too.To be honest,you may get bored by reading this story.However,great chance upon us contemplating the purpose of our existence.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
