February 29, 2016
Sadness, regret, and insidious dread permeate every page of this beautifully crafted, relentless novel. NDiaye’s (All My Friends) story chronicles a curse handed down from mother to daughter. Ladivine, a woman of mysterious origin, raises a daughter, Malinka, in France. A haughty child who has never known her father, Malinka begins to refer to her mother simply as “the servant” and eventually leaves home. She makes a new life for herself as Clarisse, and though she travels once a month to visit Ladivine in Bordeaux, she coldheartedly reveals not a single detail of her new life, not even about her husband, Richard, or that she has a daughter, also named Ladivine. But the vacant Clarisse must pay for her coldness. Richard leaves Clarisse, and years later, when Clarisse decides to go back to being Malinka—perhaps her true self—murderous consequences ensue after she shares the truth about her past with a sinister new boyfriend. Terrible, eerie things happen to the younger Ladivine when she goes on holiday with her own husband and two children, to a foreign (and unspecified) land that NDiaye hints may be the place where her namesake was born. Most unsettling is that people in this hot, poor country seem to believe they have seen Ladivine before, that indeed they know her. A familial strain of darkness runs through the lives of these women, and they must atone. Themes concerning race, as well as supernatural forces, sometimes canine in form, always lurk nearby in this tale.
February 15, 2016
A trio of women create, discover, and keep disappearing on each other in this melancholy modern fable. Despite what the usual comparative literature syllabus tells you, magical realism isn't limited to the South American masters. In her bizarrely lovely new novel, NDiaye (Three Strong Women, 2012, etc.)--also a playwright, essayist, and screenwriter--offers strong evidence that the particularly French version of elegant, often opaque mystery does as well in fiction as on film. Here's what we know for sure: Clarisse Riviere, nee Malinka, visits her mother, Ladivine, once a month in Bordeaux. Then Clarisse has a daughter, also Ladivine, whose namesake is barely aware she exists. When Clarisse dies unexpectedly, both mother and child learn about her killer from the press. Here's what we don't know: most everything else, even after the final page. Yet NDiaye manages, by dropping tiny hints writ exquisite, to keep those pages turning all the same. Through flashbacks and passing glances--for instance, the lone phrase in which we learn that Ladivine mere is black--she builds a complex story of three desperately sad, searching lives. These scenes don't tend to end well for the players, but NDiaye's gift with language (rendered delicately by her translator, Stump) gives them surprising appeal. Clarisse calls her mother "the servant," accepts her role as "the princess," and celebrates her daughter as "that marvelous baby." But as she withdraws further into herself, losing her husband and gaining a dangerous lover in the process, it becomes more and more difficult to get a sense of who this double-named woman really is. The reader's desire to find out mirrors the longings of the two Ladivines. NDiaye reveals only as much reality as she wants to at any given moment, though--and therein lies her magic. Come for the promise of a big reveal; stay for the beauty of small moments.
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Starred review from April 1, 2016
You can never go home again, but Clarisse does, and often. Identity, guilt, shamethese are the themes that award-winning French author NDiaye (Three Strong Women, 2012) confronts in this mesmerizing, multigenerational novel. It begins from the perspective of Clarisse Riviere. We soon learn that her real name is Malinka and that she is the daughter of Ladivine Sylla, a poor black cleaning lady. No onenot Clarisse's husband, nor Clarisse's own daughterknows of Ladivine's existence; nor does Ladivine know anything of her daughter's husband or her granddaughter. Clarisse has chosen to keep her mother's identity a secret out of shame and embarrassment. Yet once a month, out of duty and obligation, but also a complicated love, Clarisse makes the covert trip by train to Bordeaux to visit her mother, giving her enough money to last the rest of the month and a small gift ( a bottle of eau de cologne . . . a genuine linen dishtowel ). The secrecy weighs heavy on her soul, exacting a painful and emotional toll over the years, with tragic consequences. Clarisse's sin lingers in the next generation in NDiaye's devastating tale, which addresses the psychic pain of prejudice, class consciousness, discrimination, and self-loathing only to end in a satisfying moment of unexpected hope.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
Starred review from March 1, 2016
Malinka and her dark-skinned mother, Ladivine, often drew stares in the French village where they lived in a cramped, two-room flat. A pale beauty, Malinka intuited early on that with cold, calculated determination she could rise above her mother's life of servitude. At 16, she caught a train to Bordeaux, took a room and a job, and reinvented herself as Clarisse, a girl no longer burdened with a family. When Richard Riviere proposed marriage, he was blinded by Clarisse's beauty, failing to see the real woman, Malinka, hidden just under the skin. For years Clarisse lived a lie, assuaging her guilt with secret weekly visits to her mother yet cruelly withholding the news that she had given birth to a daughter, also named Ladivine--a daughter who, after a shockingly violent act, will desperately yearn to know and understand who her mother really was. The author introduces a metaphysical element into the narrative, imbuing an abandoned dog with a disconcerting spirituality and often blurring the line between dreams and reality. VERDICT This strangely hypnotic novel exudes anguish and loneliness. NDiaye, a Prix Goncourt winner and Man Booker nominee for Three Strong Women, writes profoundly disturbing novels in such riveting prose that one cannot look away. [See Prepub Alert, 10/19/15.]--Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
November 15, 2015
A Prix Goncourt winner whose Three Strong Women received front-page coverage in the New York Times Book Review, French author NDiaye recently won the Gold Medal in the Arts from the Kennedy Center International Committee on the Arts. Here, Clarisse Riviere leaves behind her husband and daughter once a month and heads for Bordeaux to visit her mother, Ladivine, who knows nothing of Clarisse's circumstances and thinks of her only as Malinka.
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
March 1, 2016
Malinka and her dark-skinned mother, Ladivine, often drew stares in the French village where they lived in a cramped, two-room flat. A pale beauty, Malinka intuited early on that with cold, calculated determination she could rise above her mother's life of servitude. At 16, she caught a train to Bordeaux, took a room and a job, and reinvented herself as Clarisse, a girl no longer burdened with a family. When Richard Riviere proposed marriage, he was blinded by Clarisse's beauty, failing to see the real woman, Malinka, hidden just under the skin. For years Clarisse lived a lie, assuaging her guilt with secret weekly visits to her mother yet cruelly withholding the news that she had given birth to a daughter, also named Ladivine--a daughter who, after a shockingly violent act, will desperately yearn to know and understand who her mother really was. The author introduces a metaphysical element into the narrative, imbuing an abandoned dog with a disconcerting spirituality and often blurring the line between dreams and reality. VERDICT This strangely hypnotic novel exudes anguish and loneliness. NDiaye, a Prix Goncourt winner and Man Booker nominee for Three Strong Women, writes profoundly disturbing novels in such riveting prose that one cannot look away. [See Prepub Alert, 10/19/15.]--Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.