A Woman Without Qualities
Publisher
:
Albin Michel
Parution date
:
EAN
:
9782226190666
Number of pages
:
177
Description
A woman is traveling from despair to strength, from Paris to Shanghai, from internal solitude to the possibility of sharing. . . . She needs to explain her journey to the man she is learning to love, but how? In a stunning debut novel, written as a letter, the author draws a vivid picture of a woman’s changing sense of her femininity.
The narrator is seen by others as beautiful, sexy, and successful, a woman whom men walk across a room to be close to. She plays the part, but behind the mask of the femme fatale is another sort of woman. From childhood, she had felt she was unlike other girls. As she grew, her feelings intensified and she came to believe she was not quite a woman . . . but certainly not a man. What was she? Then a physician confirmed her fears. She had no ovaries, her uterus had never fully developed; she was irreversibly sterile. How does one feel womanly, she wondered, when your body has betrayed you?
She tries to arrange her life to suit what she believes are her needs. She makes an arrangement with Sontaar, a Swedish man, and lives with him in his house in Paris. They are seldom together: She has her own room and comes and goes as she pleases with no need for explanation. When she realizes that her life consists of pretense, of boring dinners where alcohol and drugs are common, of endless business trips and casual sex, she searches for a way out. She asks Sontaar to buy a house by the sea where she can try to understand herself, try to find peace.
Then, during a trip to Shanghai, she meets a man who in many ways is like her. He is always on the run, always between flights and countries. He already has two women in his life, and yet they fall in love. Truly in love. But she does not yet understand herself . . . or him. Who is he? Will he be able to accept her condition? How will she tell him? She chooses to write so that she need not face him as he learns her story. This book, this long and beautiful love letter, a tribute to life, is the result.
Author
Virginie Mouzat : Virginie Mouzat is a fashion journalist living in Paris. Une Femme sans qualités is her first novel.
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