The Governesses

Author(s): Anne Serre; Mark Hutchinson (Translator)

Novel

Written with the elegance of old French fables, the dark sensuality of Djuna Barnes and the subtle comedy of Robert Walser, this semi-deranged erotic fairy tale introduces  readers to the marvelous Anne Serre.


 

Description: In a large country house shut off from the world by a gated garden, three young governesses responsible for the education of a group of little boys are preparing a party. The governesses, however, seem to spend more time running around in a state of frenzied desire than attending to the children's education. One of their main activities is lying in wait for any passing stranger, and then throwing themselves on him like drunken Maenads. The rest of the time they drift about in a kind of sated, melancholy calm, spied upon by an old man in the house opposite, who watches their goings-on through a telescope. As they hang paper lanterns and prepare for the ball in their own honor, and in honor of the little boys rolling hoops on the lawn, much is mysterious: one reviewer wrote of the book's "deceptively simple words and phrasing, the transparency of which works like a mirror reflecting back on the reader." Written with the elegance of old French fables, the dark sensuality of Djuna Barnes and the subtle comedy of Robert Walser, this semi-deranged erotic fairy tale introduces English readers to the marvelous Anne Serre.


Review: "The story, classical in appearance, soon jolts us out of our sleepy ways." -- Florence Sarrola - Le Monde "A delightful sabbath." -- Liberation "A hypnotic tale of three governesses and the sensuous education they provide. Ines, Laura, and Eleonore are not exactly Jane Eyre types. Prone to Dionysian frenzies, should any passerby fall "into the trap of their vast, lunar privacy," they pounce upon, seduce, and devour him ("in a ladylike manner") to sate their ungovernable desires. This could be the setup for a neo-pagan farce, but as Serre delves into the three women's existence, the novel taps into deeper, quieter waters: the Keatsian twinning of joy and melancholy. Serre's wistful ode to pleasure is as enchanting as its three nymph-like protagonists." -- Publishers Weekly (starred) "A cruel and exhilarating book. Anne Serre's style is perfectly controlled. Colorful, by turns elegant and violent, it provokes that enchantment borne out of an unbridled imagination." -- Paula Jacques - Marie-Claire "Told in surrealist bursts, this novella combines the dreaminess of Barbara Comyns, Aimee Bender, and Kathryn Davis with the fairy-tale eroticism of Angela Carter. Each sentence evokes a dream logic both languid and circuitous as the governesses move through a fever of domesticity and sexual abandon. A sensualist, surrealist romp." -- Kirkus


 


 


Author Biography: Anne Serre was born in 1960, her first novel, Les Gouvernantes, was published in 1992, and praised by Michel Crepu in La Croix for its "remarkable economy of style." She is the author of fourteen novels and short fictions, and the recipient of a 2008 Cino del Duca Foundation award. Mark Hutchinson was born in London in 1957 and lives in Paris. Among his many translations are Rene Char's Hypnos: Notes from the French Resistance and The Inventors and Other Poems.


Product Information

General Fields

  • : 9780811228077
  • : New Directions Publishing
  • : New Directions Publishing
  • : 0.0997903
  • : September 2018
  • : 1 Centimeters X 11.4 Centimeters X 18.3 Centimeters
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Anne Serre; Mark Hutchinson (Translator)
  • : Paperback
  • : English
  • : 112