Sphinx, by Anne Garréta

Sphinx was the next selection for my Women In Translation book club. It is touted as, among other things, the first novel by a woman writer from Oulipo to be translated into English. I've read books by a handful of Oulipo members: Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, and Italo Calvino, but before this one I'm not sure I'd read a book written specifically with an Oulipian constraint. If on a Winter's Night A Traveler would be the closest, and I can't tell (in a very rushed search at least) whether it's considered "official" Oulipo canon. 

I'm going to be very vague as I write about Sphinx, out of respect for the introduction of my copy, written by Daniel Levin Becker, which advises the reader who does not already know the unspoken constraint in Sphinx "to do everything in your power to stay ignorant for a while longer: sheathe the front and back covers of the book in kraft paper, avoid discussing it with booksellers, and don't read any reviews unless you're confident that they were written by lousy inattentive critics.*" (Fwiw, the front cover of my edition is harmless; the back cover not.) And, with this injunction to say little, I fear I won't be able to say much at all. 

I did like the book quite a bit. I somehow expected it to be a slow or difficult read – it was not, at all. It's a first person narrative about love, and loss, and grief, and coming to terms with loss eventually. It's also about the one-sidedness of relationships, how we can sometimes fail to really see the people we love. This part spoke to me especially. 

The translator's note at the end is a must-read as well. The book was written with a constraint that manifests differently in French than in English. The translator's explanation of how she handled this was fascinating (at least to me).

*This last is a jab at the reviewer who read Perec's La Disparition and failed to notice the complete absence of Es.

The Heat of the Day, by Elizabeth Bowen

I thought the Elizabeth Bowen recommendation came from Molly Young's newsletter, Read Like the Wind, and perhaps it did – but if so it must have been one of the "Why Don't You..." suggestions, because I can't seem to find her mentioned elsewhere. In any case, I picked up The Heat of the Day as well as The Death of the Heart some time ago. Last month, I was in Baltimore for the day with my dad where we met up with one of my oldest friends and drove around looking at different neighborhoods and visiting various bookstores. As we browsed the fiction shelves at Normal's, my friend pulled down a copy of The Heat of the Day. "Hey, I have that book and I keep almost reading it," I said. This friend was part of one of the book clubs that I joined during the pandemic; a book club that recently sort of fizzled out. And so, we thought, why not revive the book club and read this? I heard from my friend that she started the book in late June. Meanwhile, I was traveling for 2 weeks and not reading much. And furthermore, we hadn't actually set a date to read it by or, as far as I know, communicated to anyone else that it was the new book club selection. But, in any case, I went ahead and started it last week and finished it this afternoon. 

It's odd that this book is called The Heat of the Day when nearly all of it seems to take place at night – and in mid- to late Fall at that. There is, I thought, mostly a sense of chill throughout this book. Set in London in the midst of World War II, the book bears witness to the falling away of social norms and constraints as those who remain in the city live through the bombings, the constant fear that a loved one will be killed, the decay of trust. The book mainly centers on Stella, a widow of about 40, who has been told that her lover Robert, a slightly younger former Captain wounded at Dunkirk, has been accused of giving secrets to the enemy. We are with her in her dilemma, unsure what to believe. Other characters, the man who has made the accusation, Stella's son – a young soldier, a young woman named Louie who chances to meet the accuser, float in and out of the book, often on tangents unrelated to the main narrative. Or, perhaps, Stella and her lover are not the main narrative at all. Rather, it's wartime London and these are the characters that inhabit it.

The Fortune of the Rougons, by Émile Zola

It was several years ago now that I decided I wanted to read Émile Zola's 20-book Rougon-Macquart series. I had already read two of them (Au Bonheur des Dames and Nana), but I wanted to start at the beginning and read the whole series in the recommended order. For years, I collected the editions one by one as I found them at bookstores, but there were a handful that never seemed to turn up on shelves. In February of this year, I decided to just order the six books I was still missing directly from Oxford University Press. With all 20 books in hand, it still took me a few months to finally start the whole thing. La Fortune des Rougon was both the first published and the first in Zola's recommended reading order. 

The series follows a split family as it branches out over five generations. This book detailed the origin of the divide: Adélaïde Fouque, a/k/a Aunt Dide, married M. Rougon, had one son with him, and was then widowed. Following Rougon's death, she took up with M. Macquart, without marrying him, and with him had a son and a daughter. Though the three children grow up together, when they reach adulthood Pierre Rougon, who sees himself as the only deserving heir, cheats his siblings out of the wealth they might of inherited and distances himself from his mother. While the entire family history is told in this book, it's not exactly what the book is about. The main subject of the book is one week in December of 1851, as Republicans mobilize in the south of France and the bourgeois reactionaries try to seize power in the fictional village of Plassans. The divide in the family reflects the divide in the country, with some family members supporting and joining up with the Republican cause and others supporting the coup that led to the Second Empire. 

Nearly all the characters in this book are scheming and selfish, particularly Aunt Dide's two sons. A pair of young, idealistic Republican martyrs (one of whom is the grandson of M. Macquart) are the only heroes in this book, with Aunt Dide as practically the only other sympathetic character. Doctor Pascal was also an outlier, which made me look forward to reading the book about him (a long time from now, I'm afraid, as it's book number 20).

While I enjoyed parts of this book, it was also kind of a struggle to read. It's rather disjointed because it seems to be taking on two tasks at once: (1) introducing the entire back story and cast of characters for the 20 book series, and (2) telling the story of this particular struggle during 1951. It does a good job of both, but they don't really blend together. The book starts with a short history of a particular spot in Plassans where two young lovers meet (the martyrs mentioned above), then follows these lovers as they join the Republican uprising. That's chapter one. After that, we meet Pierre Rougon, and from there the book goes on what is, in essence, an extremely long aside on the entire family history and members of the extended family. Then, 100 pages or so later, it picks up the narrative again of the events in 1951. I imagine that the long aside will be helpful to understanding the whole series -- and indeed, it was helpful for understanding the family dynamics in this book -- but it felt largely outside the main narrative. 

Anyway, next up is His Excellency Eugene Rougon. Eugene is the eldest son of Pierre and a supporter of the Empire, and I gather it picks up in the early days of the Second Empire, so I assume it will involve more selfish scheming. I won't be jumping right into it, but hopefully I'll get there before long.