She Came to Stay

If there's anything more irritating than the Roman à clef, with its cheap lacquering of lived experience, it's café-dwelling, pernod-sniffing French intellectuals with their unshakeable disdain for all things tangible. There's a paragraph on page 132 of this book which struck me with thunderous poetic force. Two of the characters come across a street market:

"Here were old shoes, gramophone records, silks that were falling to pieces, enamel bowls, chipped crockery, all on the bare muddy ground. Dark-skinned women clothed in brightly-coloured tatters were sitting on newspapers or old rugs, leaning up against the hoardings."

The reason this passage, which would be unremarkable in a normal novel, hit the way it did is that it deals with show more real, physical, empirical things; objects made of matter. It's about the only time in the book that reality — the thing that great fiction renders immediate and indelible in its infinite richness and variety — intrudes on the vaporous emotional-intellectual existence of these unbearable self-deluding characters.

It's doubly frustrating, because the author manages some acute descriptions of jealousy, the ugliest, least assuageable emotion, and the insidious way it stilettos its victims. But it's less than they deserve. The presence of Sartre and de Beauvoir in Paris in the late 30's was surely an even better reason to flee that part of the world than what was unfolding across the border to the east. show less

I alternated between being deeply annoyed by these intellectuals trying to convince themselves they were not prey to such emotions as jealousy while swimming in it, and imagining they were "free" while doing everything they could to manipulate and trap one another (with some disturbing "grooming" aspects, as I saw noted in other reviews)...and at the same time being deeply engaged in some of the questions (puzzles, paradoxes) about human relationships and the sometimes-honest soul-searching of the main character. de Beauvoir managed to make the cafe-visiting intellectual scene gripping at times (which is more than Hemingway pulled off in [b:The Sun Also Rises|3876|The Sun Also Rises|Ernest show more Hemingway|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1509802323l/3876._SY75_.jpg|589497]), but could not make the Sartre character attractive. I am interested to read [b:The Ethics of Ambiguity|21119|The Ethics of Ambiguity|Simone de Beauvoir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388193435l/21119._SY75_.jpg|1257058], as I understand it is something of a critique of Sartre's philosophy in regard to ethics. show less

In truth, if I could, I'd give this both one and five stars. For the most part, the book drags on and languishes in its own sentiment, with nothing occurring (and I'm a big fan of books in which nothing occurs). The characters are largely contemptable.

But every so often, the characters and the words resonate with exceptional strength, and almost *because* they're so contemptable, it's the kind of writing that hits you in the head, heart and gut all at once.

And wanted to see how Ms de Beauvoir treated it in her fiction. Reading this semi-autobiographical novel did give me a look at a practical application of that philosophy.

Oh, and it's also a very interesting story. Francoise and Pierre have a deep and open relationship. They befriend a young woman (Xaviere) but their attempts to create a “perfect triangle” are unsuccessful. Partly because their philosophy doesn't align well with human nature. And partly because Xaviere herself is a narcissist – or maybe she's just young when most of us are that way to some extent. The depth of human emotions and motivations portrayed though the characters' iterations is fascinating to watch. Through the novel, we see Francoise change from someone show more devoted to her partner and to a philosophy, to someone who comes into her own as a person.

So glad I read this. show less

De Beauvoir's quietly autobiographical tale of a young woman moving in the home of a couple in an open relationship is at once heart breaking, angry and tender.

The book is like a boat on tumultuous water, the story tipping between the character's view points and over the main narrators anger, complicity, love/lust and hatred.

A compelling read, my personal favourite of De Beauvoir's back catalogue.

I kept noticing that Francoise and Pierre are always dissing Xaviere, most of the time behind her back. But the evidence that Xaviere reciprocates back to the evil pair is quite sparse. Or maybe I read too quickly through it to pick up on any of her comebacks.
But when they were all three or just two of them in the same room, Xaviere seemed rock solid in her comebacks. Whenever Francoise would say something really ignorant, Xaviere was always able to fend it off somehow.
I think whenever a pair who is strong decides to gang up on someone else, and the tricks are all secrets, that is the highest degree of degeneracy in the book.
Francoise and Pierre seem to take umbrage at every little thing that Xaviere says or does, so I wonder what their show more big problem is and why they can not live and let live. They need an object to attack because maybe they would be too bored if they could only analyse themselves.
I tried my best to understand the book in French, but maybe I will have to re-read it in English to get some of the nuances that I might have missed.
French or English does not matter, I think by the time I got to the last 5 pages or so, something extra super nasty was happening.
I think someone should have warned Xaviere to go to a community drop in centre instead of however she met up with the two losers that latched on to her. show less

Aside from it being a racist book, it's a pretty honest look into the internal work of non-monogamous relations