Meet Marie Darrieussecq
- Mon 14 September, 18.30
Daunt Books Notting Hill, London
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Tue 15 September, 19.00
Toppings and Co., York
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Wed 16 September, 19.00
West Kirby Bookshop, West Kirby
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- Thu 17 September, 19.00
Toppings and Co., Edinburgh
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Susan Sontag once wrote: “To be a woman is to be an actress. Being feminine is a kind of theatre”. In How to Make a Woman, Marie Darrieussecq explores this proposition, pulling back the curtain on the charades of femininity with clarity and empathy.
Alice Blackhurst, Times Literary Supplement
Fans of Annie Ernaux’s books and Eric Rohmer’s films will enjoy Darrieussecq’s ability to sketch a microscopic view of a macroscopic life…. [How to Make a Woman] is a fascinating exploration of a friendship that is constantly in limbo.
Oonagh Devitt Tremblay, Financial Times
Darrieussecq is one of the most prolific and distinguished living writers in France with a truly impressive body of work.
Samantha Harvey, Guardian
Rose and Solange are lifelong friends, growing up together in the Basque region of France in the 1980s. Their paths are intertwined, yet they enter adulthood on radically different footing: Rose, who prizes stability above all else, moves to Bordeaux to study psychology and remains committed to her childhood sweetheart, Christian; rebellious Solange shakes off her old connections and moves from Bordeaux to Paris to London in pursuit of a life on the stage.
In How to Make a Woman (Fabriquer une femme, P.O.L., 2024), we follow these two young women’s experiences of adolescence, love, sex, work and motherhood, as they negotiate their places in the world and find their own versions of fulfilment.
Written with humour and heart, Marie Darrieussecq’s latest novel is an electrifying, sometimes brutal portrait of female friendship and of two identities under construction.
About the Author
Marie Darrieussecq was born in Bayonne in 1969 and is recognised as one of the leading voices of contemporary French literature. Her first novel, Pig Tales, was translated into thirty-five languages. She has written more than twenty books, including Tom Is Dead, All the Way, Men, Being Here: The Life of Paula Modersohn-Becker, Our Life in the Forest, The Baby and Crossed Lines. In 2013 Marie Darrieussecq was awarded the Prix Médicis and the Prix des Prix for her novel Men. She has written art criticism and journalism for several publications, including Libération and Charlie Hebdo, and is also a translator from English and has practised as a psychoanalyst. She lives in Paris.
- Picture: Hélène Bamberger