INSEPARABLE, a never-before-seen novel by Simone de Beauvoir

INSEPARABLE: A Never-Before-Published Novel
SIMONE de BEAUVOIR, intro. by Margaret Atwood (tr. Sandra Smith)
Ecco Press
$26.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3 trepidatious stars of five

The Publisher Says: A never-before-published novel by the iconic Simone de Beauvoir of an intense and vivid girlhood friendship

From the moment Sylvie and Andrée meet in their Parisian day school, they see in each other an accomplice with whom to confront the mysteries of girlhood. For the next ten years, the two are the closest of friends and confidantes as they explore life in a post-World War One France, and as Andrée becomes increasingly reckless and rebellious, edging closer to peril.

Sylvie, insightful and observant, sees a France of clashing ideals and religious hypocrisy—and at an early age is determined to form her own opinions. Andrée, a tempestuous dreamer, is inclined to melodrama and romance. Despite their different natures they rely on each other to safeguard their secrets while entering adulthood in a world that did not pay much attention to the wills and desires of young women.

Deemed too intimate to publish during Simone de Beauvoir’s life, Inseparable offers fresh insight into the groundbreaking feminist’s own coming-of-age; her transformative, tragic friendship with her childhood friend Zaza Lacoin; and how her youthful relationships shaped her philosophy. Sandra Smith’s vibrant translation of the novel will be long cherished by de Beauvoir devotees and first-time readers alike.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, read this:

Madame Gallard had indulgently told Mama the story of Andrée’s martyrdom: the cracked skin, enormous blisters, paraffin-coated dressings, Andrée’s delirium, her courage, how one of her little friends had kicked her while they were playing a game and had reopened her wounds. She’d made such an effort not to scream that she’d fainted. When she came to my house to see my notebooks, I looked at her with respect; she took notes in beautiful handwriting, and I thought about her swollen thigh under her pleated skirt. Never had anything as interesting happened to me. I suddenly had the impression that nothing had ever happened to me at all.

All the children I knew bored me, but Andrée made me laugh when we walked together on the playground between classes. She was marvelous at imitating the brusque gestures of Mademoiselle Dubois, the unctuous voice of Mademoiselle Vendroux, the principal. She knew loads of secrets about the place from her older sister: these young women were affiliated with the Jesuits; they wore their hair parted on the side when they were still novices, in the middle once they’d taken their vows.

Here is a world limned in a few lines...we're given the vast scope of the world surrounding the small, claustrophobically so it will turn out, world of our story, and it is utterly impossible to look away from it.

Simone de Beauvoir was a master of the craft of storytelling.

Author de Beauvoir did not write solely for women, of course, though she deliberately treated subjects of importance to women. But, by her choice of this wildly romantic subject matter, it does not hurt to be deeply identified with women to obtain the fullest impact of the story. I acknowledge that it's simplistic to say that, to be fully satisfied with a deep dive into an adolescent passion, one would most likely need to be a woman. I am not alone in holding this reductive opinion, though, if one simply goes by the marketing materials of similarly-themed work. I am aware that this generalization will cause irritation and displeasure among significant parts of a book by Simone de Beauvoir's audience. But the subject matter limits the appeal, even if that's not the case with her writing. No criticism of her writing is really possible for me, as I have read translations of her work only; the most I can say is that, based on the pervasive beauty of the phrase-making in the work of de Beauvoir's I've read, the likelihood of her own creation being other than beautiful is very low.

That said, at some risk to my Comments section's peacefulness, I don't think the book should be down-rated for that quite piffling (if explanatory of the comparative dearth of male reviewers looking at it) quibble. The consensus of critical opinion comes down on the side of this work's value and beauty being high:

1. Deborah Levy in The Guardian brings up the story's main thrust: "The enigma of female friendship that is as intense as a love affair, but that is not sexually expressed is always an interesting subject."


2. Tatiana Nuñez in Los Angeles Review of Books says pithily, "Interestingly, the novel’s title is invoked not to show how close the girls are but rather how little they understand each other and, by extension, how difficult it is to be known, even by someone you love and with whom you want to share yourself."


3. Merve Emre in The New Yorker reveals, "Sylvie’s feeling for Andrée as they grow up is not just love; it is a transcendent love, the love by which all other loves must be defined and judged."


4. Publishers Weekly's unsigned review states baldly, "The trailblazing feminist writes bracingly of the complexity of female friendships. Beauvoir’s mastery of fiction further demonstrates her bravura."


5. Normally phlegmatic-to-dour Kirkus Reviews' anonymous reviewer quite piercingly laments, "It is heartbreaking to think of the author, with her brilliant, incisive mind, absorbing Sartre's casual misogyny the way the tragic heroine of this book absorbs the narrow-minded values that destroy her," then gives the book its deeply coveted star.

So who the hell am I, a little nobody book-blogger with a few hundred faithful readers (hi y'all! thanks for coming!) AND that most unpopular of things, a (supremely cisgender) man, to say, "she was right to keep it in a drawer"?

Author de Beauvoir's fame stems in part from her long, convoluted, complicated Grand Passion for/with Jean-Paul Sartre. Much of what she said and why the Establishment of her day paid her to say it stemmed from his fame. Hers was a reflected fame during her lifetime; it is the modern world's absence of desire to continue to privilege men before women that has led to de Beauvoir's words increasingly being considered on their own quite considerable merits. Her critical reception is ever less bound to her relationship with Sartre. The brightening light of Fame she shines now is increasingly her own, independent of any other's existence or accomplishments. This is, to my mind, exactly and precisely as it should be; this is a development deeply to be desired and one that deserves celebration.

Margaret Atwood's Introduction to this edition of the book, excerpted at Literary Hub, reads in part:

Without Zaza {the Andrée character in the book}, without the passionate devotion between the two of them, without Zaza’s encouragement of Beauvoir’s intellectual ambitions and her desire to break free of the conventions of her time, without Beauvoir’s view of the crushing expectations placed on Zaza as a woman by her family and her society—expectations that, in Beauvoir’s view, literally squeezed the life out of her, despite her mind, her strength, her wit, her will—would there have been a Second Sex? And without that pivotal book, what else would not have followed?

Furthermore, how many versions of Zazas are living on the earth right now—bright, talented, capable women, some oppressed by the laws of their nations, others through poverty or discrimination within supposedly more gender-equal countries? Inseparable is particular to its own time and place—all novels are—but it transcends its own time and place as well.

Read it and weep, Dear Reader. The author herself weeps at the outset: this is how the story begins, with tears. It seems that, despite her forbidding exterior, Beauvoir never stopped weeping for the lost Zaza. Perhaps she herself worked so hard to become who she was as a sort of memorial: Beauvoir must express herself to the utmost, because Zaza could not.

So, I find myself in august company on the one hand...agreeing with Author Atwood entirely on all the above yet dissenting from the essential context of this Introduction to Inseparable. I don't think Author de Beauvoir is well-served by the publication of this slight and unenlightening tale.

I could go through some reasons I felt this way. I'm not a scholar, though, so no one who disagrees with me would fail to point out that fact with their (possibly) unspoken subtext being, "...and I should care what you think about this work by a monadnock of Feminism and Existentialism because...?" I will confine myself to this observation: "How is Sylvie's utter, consuming passion for Andrée, that so obsesses her and fascinates her that we-the-reader have little to no sense of Sylvie's essential being, any different from Simone's for Jean-Paul?"

I did not enjoy this fictionalization of the essentially destructive and rigidly confining nature of romantic obsession nearly as much as I would have had I seen some glimmer of recognition of that destruction and confinement's consequences for the subject...and, by not-very-great extension, the author.