Lauren Elkin

An entertaining, informative and thought provoking mix of memoir, literary criticism, art appreciation and film interpretation that centres on women's struggle to be as functionally invisible as men when wandering the city. Elkin is an honest memoirist not shy of showing her own shortcomings and made me laugh a lot in the telling of her various moves to live in cities around the world. She has persuaded me, too, to finally read some Jean Rhys and watch some Agnès Varda. I might read some show more George Sand, too. These are just three of the women whose use of the city as inspiration for creativity and self-expression is inspiration for Elkin's own flâneuserie. I want to visit Venice and re-visit Paris, New York and Tokyo, now. show less

Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art by Lauren Elkin is an engaging and enlightening critique of art in its many forms (bodies?) and the intersection with society and everyday life.

Once I settled into the way the book is presented, snippets both long and short, art criticism mixed with memoir(ish) stories, and some more general cultural criticism, I came to love it. I thought of it as sitting and having a conversation with a friend, albeit an extremely intelligent and perceptive show more friend, where the topic can shift from moment to moment but never really leaves the larger subject.

Even though I came mostly for the art and cultural criticism, the analyses of works both known and unknown to me, I remember being floored by a couple sentences early on that spoke more to our current political and social environment, especially in the United States where I live. Talking about Christine Blasey Ford's testimony, delivered clearly and consistently, then Kavanaugh's emotional and unhinged response, all of which was followed by his confirmation as a Supreme Court justice, Elkins put into plain words what has been often unspoken but known by many who watched. If an educated white woman giving calm and consistent testimony isn't going to be believed, who will? And the kicker, the thing that is upsetting but also, in my opinion, more likely the truth, what if she was believed and "it didn't matter?" It sure seems like, to a large part of the population that is the case.

I would recommend this to anyone interested in feminist art (in a broad sense) and especially those interested in the dynamics between that art and the society to which it is speaking/responding. As I have come to expect from Elkin, the writing will engage and challenge you to think through and beyond what is written.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less

‘Flâneuse’ wasn’t quite what I expected. I thought it would more systematically consider the history of women walking in cities, while it turned out to be mostly personal memoir with regular digressions concerning specific female figures. This is purely personal taste, but the digressions were much more interesting to me than the memoir parts. Perhaps because the author’s romantic life depressed me; I didn’t like the theme of women following dysfunctional men around. Nonetheless, show more Elkin is an involving and erudite writer. I liked the chapters about Paris best, especially the one concerned with George Sand’s role in the 1848 revolution. The Venice chapter, centred on Sophie Calle, was unsettling yet atmospheric and intriguing. By contrast, I didn’t get very much from the chapter on being unhappy in Tokyo. This book really reads like an essay collection, and I believe several chapters were originally published as stand alone essays. It isn’t a history of the flâneuse as such, which was what I wanted, so I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. I definitely agree with Elkin’s philosophy of wandering the streets to familiarise yourself with a city, although I prefer to do this in smaller cities that don’t overwhelm my ability to construct mental maps. London is entirely too big; Cambridge and Edinburgh are much more manageable. show less

A novel of layers and layers. Three couples across two eras whose lives have wittingly and unwittingly crossed, connected, changed, charged and loved. Psychoanalysis is at the core of the novel, as the women especially (Anna, Clementine and Florence) seek to understand themselves, their relationships, feminism, history, conflicts and contradictions. There are a lot of C's in this paragraph. There are coincidences, but few conditions. They are connected to each other, and their men (Jonathan, show more Henry and David).

The scaffolding is both literal and metaphorical. Something erected and dismantled, something that supports and holds things in place, but is never permanent.

Written in short bites, shifting from one to the other.

Elkin is an American who has lived in Paris for 20 years, now living in London. She has written a debut novel that owes something to all those places.

I loved her non-fiction book: [No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute]. show less