La Lectrice (Reader for Hire)
A Review
Marie Constance is a 34 year-old, who has “one husband, no children, no profession”. She is the reader for hire, this is an unusual but original plot and largely unpredictable. She puts an ad in the newspaper which leads to an encounter which leaves her uncomfortable. An attractive young, eloquent woman putting such an ad in the paper; but she gets past her first hurdle. She meets a number of people she reads to; they all end rather badly.
Her first “client” is a paraplegic child named Eric. She reads the fourteen-year-old boy a short story from the great French writer Guy de Maupassant. It ends in disaster. It has her feeling both ridiculous and hopeless; a failure no doubt. She questions her own sanity because something happens which she could not have anticipated whilst reading to the boy. Little Eric’s tastes are not so unusual either; he prefers his reader to wear short skirts and oddly enough, she obliges. The boy, from the excitement of the Maupassant story, has a fit and is hospitalised, the woman panics; it is embarrassing all right but she continues her work.
She continues despite being made to look an absolute fool; after being humiliated she next visits her next appointment, who, in truth, could not be any different from young Eric. The person she sees next is more interesting. The woman is an old Hungarian countess who has a fondness for Karl Marx, this once again lands Constance into trouble, with all sorts of political intrigue, then there is a magistrate who prefers, ironically enough, for her to read the salacious works of the anarchist, Marquis de Sade. There is another child, the schoolgirl, Clorinde, who takes little interest in the book, Alice in Wonderland, Constance is reading to her. She, quite irresponsibly, takes her too the fair which ends in disaster once again.
This is a novella by the acclaimed French author Raymond Jean and is a little over 170 pages long. It is a book which ultimately is a celebration of literature. We go from French literature to Marxist ideology and to a children’s adventure to the world of a French revolutionary. It is ultimately a comedy and there are some nice, memorable passages. It is told in the first person; the first person feeds us this information about her life, at times one gets the impression she sees herself as a great big blockhead who does very absurd things in her life; her adventures as “the reader”, support that argument. It is well written, it flows nicely, the translator, Adriana Hunter, does a wonderful job. The book is another offering by Peirene Press.
The central character is a woman and it is not entirely convincing, and it is no surprise it is written by a man. Everything, of course, is seen through her eyes. The qualities in the book, and there are many, are not in the detailed characterisation; there really is not much in the way of characterisation. It is like The Catcher in the Rye in this respect. In that book there is probably one dimensional character, which of course is Holden Caulfield, his sister Phoebe is not a developed character at all and neither is anybody else, and like this novella, it is told in the first person. George Orwell’s 1984 lacks the characterisation as well but that is not the intention of this book in any case. It is a book, though, that does make us think and it should make us read more or think about reading more, because we are shown a world of different literature and books. We can learn a great deal from this book.
La Lectrice is thirty years old this year. It was written in 1986 by Raymond Jean when he was in his 61st year; he passed away in 2012.
A Review
Marie Constance is a 34 year-old, who has “one husband, no children, no profession”. She is the reader for hire, this is an unusual but original plot and largely unpredictable. She puts an ad in the newspaper which leads to an encounter which leaves her uncomfortable. An attractive young, eloquent woman putting such an ad in the paper; but she gets past her first hurdle. She meets a number of people she reads to; they all end rather badly.
Her first “client” is a paraplegic child named Eric. She reads the fourteen-year-old boy a short story from the great French writer Guy de Maupassant. It ends in disaster. It has her feeling both ridiculous and hopeless; a failure no doubt. She questions her own sanity because something happens which she could not have anticipated whilst reading to the boy. Little Eric’s tastes are not so unusual either; he prefers his reader to wear short skirts and oddly enough, she obliges. The boy, from the excitement of the Maupassant story, has a fit and is hospitalised, the woman panics; it is embarrassing all right but she continues her work.
She continues despite being made to look an absolute fool; after being humiliated she next visits her next appointment, who, in truth, could not be any different from young Eric. The person she sees next is more interesting. The woman is an old Hungarian countess who has a fondness for Karl Marx, this once again lands Constance into trouble, with all sorts of political intrigue, then there is a magistrate who prefers, ironically enough, for her to read the salacious works of the anarchist, Marquis de Sade. There is another child, the schoolgirl, Clorinde, who takes little interest in the book, Alice in Wonderland, Constance is reading to her. She, quite irresponsibly, takes her too the fair which ends in disaster once again.
This is a novella by the acclaimed French author Raymond Jean and is a little over 170 pages long. It is a book which ultimately is a celebration of literature. We go from French literature to Marxist ideology and to a children’s adventure to the world of a French revolutionary. It is ultimately a comedy and there are some nice, memorable passages. It is told in the first person; the first person feeds us this information about her life, at times one gets the impression she sees herself as a great big blockhead who does very absurd things in her life; her adventures as “the reader”, support that argument. It is well written, it flows nicely, the translator, Adriana Hunter, does a wonderful job. The book is another offering by Peirene Press.
The central character is a woman and it is not entirely convincing, and it is no surprise it is written by a man. Everything, of course, is seen through her eyes. The qualities in the book, and there are many, are not in the detailed characterisation; there really is not much in the way of characterisation. It is like The Catcher in the Rye in this respect. In that book there is probably one dimensional character, which of course is Holden Caulfield, his sister Phoebe is not a developed character at all and neither is anybody else, and like this novella, it is told in the first person. George Orwell’s 1984 lacks the characterisation as well but that is not the intention of this book in any case. It is a book, though, that does make us think and it should make us read more or think about reading more, because we are shown a world of different literature and books. We can learn a great deal from this book.
La Lectrice is thirty years old this year. It was written in 1986 by Raymond Jean when he was in his 61st year; he passed away in 2012.