Trois Femmes Puissantes - Marie NDiaye
Marie NDiaye has an illustrious career in France, winning both the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Femina and being one of only two women who have ever had their work performed at the Comédie française. It is no surprise then that Trois Femmes Puissantes (available in English as Three Strong Women) which one the Goncourt, is such a staggering sweeping epic piece of work.
Billed as a novel, TFP is more like three very loosely intertwined novellas which take place in France and in Senegal. In the first section a woman named Norah goes to see her estranged father who destroyed the family many years ago by fleeing France with his young son and leaving behind a wife and two damaged daughters forced to carve out an existence for themselves knowing that they were thought of as worthless and expendable.
In the second, a white French man filled with self-hatred and doubt slowly begins to take responsibility for the series of events which led to him being expelled from successful career in his adopted country of Senegal.
In the third, a widowed woman named Khady finds her life completely destroyed after her husband abruptly dies and she's left dependant on his family. Throughout the humiliations and violence she endures she retains such a strong sense of self that she is able to survive.
In all three of the stories these battered and broken women (and men) managed to survive the assaults made on their persons even though it twists and deforms who they are leaving them with a strange mixture of self-doubt and self-confidence. These internal struggles make the characters feel real and the way that NDiaye slowly build up the stories each few pages feeding us new, and increasingly horrifying, information is dazzling.
Billed as a novel, TFP is more like three very loosely intertwined novellas which take place in France and in Senegal. In the first section a woman named Norah goes to see her estranged father who destroyed the family many years ago by fleeing France with his young son and leaving behind a wife and two damaged daughters forced to carve out an existence for themselves knowing that they were thought of as worthless and expendable.
In the second, a white French man filled with self-hatred and doubt slowly begins to take responsibility for the series of events which led to him being expelled from successful career in his adopted country of Senegal.
In the third, a widowed woman named Khady finds her life completely destroyed after her husband abruptly dies and she's left dependant on his family. Throughout the humiliations and violence she endures she retains such a strong sense of self that she is able to survive.
In all three of the stories these battered and broken women (and men) managed to survive the assaults made on their persons even though it twists and deforms who they are leaving them with a strange mixture of self-doubt and self-confidence. These internal struggles make the characters feel real and the way that NDiaye slowly build up the stories each few pages feeding us new, and increasingly horrifying, information is dazzling.