We Always Treat Women Too Well

We Always Treat Women Too Well is a parody of No Orchids for Miss Blandish, a best-selling 1939 crime novel in which a passive, drug-addicted, suicidal young woman is raped and degraded by the depraved gangster who has abducted her. Queneau is not alone in his disgust, as this article by George Orwell shows.

Queneau transposes the action to Dublin in 1916, the Easter Rising, where a group of amateurish rebels has occupied the Post Office. They've cleared out most of the British workers unharmed, have shot two, and are settled in to return fire with the British and die nobly for their cause - an Ireland free of British rule - when they discover Gertie Girdle, who'd been hiding in the lavatory. Some of the rebels want to kill Gertie, but show more their leader thinks that brutalising an innocent female postal worker would tarnish their reputations, and that Gertie must remain alive and unsullied. After she is raped by one of the rebels, Gertie manages to ensure her survival by seduction, and she is hard to resist. She's the antithesis of Miss Blandish.

We Always Treat Women Too Well shouldn't be funny. The Easter Rising isn't funny; the violence is gruesome; Gertie is raped many times; there's even an instance of necrophilia. Perhaps it's the exuberance of the violence that makes it impossible to take seriously, plus the awareness that the bad taste is the point. The absurdity piles on: the ineptitude of the rebels with their catch-cry of "Finnegan's Wake!"; the fact that the Irish names and places all came from Ulysses; the British officer named Mountcatten.

We Always Treat Women Too Well was an entertaining read, but as an introduction to Raymond Queneau it probably isn't the best choice, so I'm planning to follow up with The Sunday of Life. show less

Probably my second favorite Queneau novel after Children of Clay. Here Raymond takes his characters from James Joyce's landmark novel 'Ulysses' and plops them down 12 years later in the middle of the 1916 Easter rebellion in Dublin Ireland. The prose is witty and acerbic and the charachterization of Joyce's protagonists is right on target. It's as if they walked back on stage 12 years later. Very funny and easy to read.

Hilarious.

Hilarious.

Un capolavoro umoristico. La purezza rivoluzionaria e quella borghese fatte a pezzi.

Het boek heb ik in de bus gelezen (woon-werkverkeer). Wat vond ik het jammer dat de busreis weer voorbij was. Me zeer vermaakt met de zoveelste geslaagde Queneau!