A Brief Stay with the Living - Softcover

Darrieussecq, Marie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571214959 ISBN 13: 9780571214952

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2004

Synopsis

Marie Darrieussecq tells the story of a single day in the life of a mother and her three grown-up daughters. Now scattered between the South of France and Buenos Aires, all four women are still connected by an incident from their past - a terrible event that the story gradually reveals . . .

About this title

Review:

Marie Darrieussecq's mesmerising novel A Brief Stay with the Living continues her concern with deciphering, understanding and writing loss. In her previous two novels (My Phantom Husband and Breathing Underwater) Darrieussecq had carefully and beautifully drawn the disorientating effect of being left or leaving; of grief without mourning (concerns about the presence of absence being so much a fixation with Lacanians such as Darian Leader, to whom, among others, she dedicates her book). And in Brief Stay, a novel narrated by four voices (a mother and her three daughters), she further investigates her theme by deepening it; here each character is trying separately to cope with the death of son/brother Pierre.

A writer of considerable talents with a love of wordplay and allusion, Darrieussecq's prose-poetry will not be to everyone's tastes. The book is a tad ostentatious, told in a dense, discordant, sometimes self-indulgent stream of consciousness, often seeming confused and certainly confusing; the characterisation paltry, the focus uneven, but the attempt is brave, the writing vivid, the voice intelligent and the book, while exacting, ultimately prepossessing and entrancing. Marie Darrieussecq continues to grow into an important writer worth reading and discussing. --Mark Thwaite

Review:

"'Darrieussecq works by taking risks... The result is worth attention; it is tremendous writing.' The Times; 'A stunningly talented writer.' Alex Clark, Guardian; 'France's best young novelist.' The New Yorker"

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0571214959
• ISBN 13: 9780571214952
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208