Women, Art, Image, Desire
On the Books of Nathalie Léger
Those of you who follow me on Twitter may know that I recently read and fell in love with Nathalie Léger’s triptych: Exposition (translated by Amanda DeMarco), Suite for Barbara Loden (translated by Natasha Lehrer and Cécile Menon), and The White Dress (translated by Natasha Lehrer), all published by Dorothy Project. I read all three books in a row and found myself absorbed in each, loving each. Probably Suite for Barbara Loden is the best — and others have said this too — but, really, they are all very good.
They are nonfiction, all short, each around 120-150 pages. I think most people call these books a triptych instead of a trilogy because they don’t have a unifying story and you can read them out of order (by which I mean the order they were first published in — it’s all a little confusing because the English versions came out in a different order than the original French ones did), but they do belong together and fit together as a whole. It’s the books’ structures, themes, and moods that make them a set. But perhaps it’s misleading to say they don’t have one story that runs through them. They don’t have a plot, exactly, but they are all in part about Léger’s family. And the sections on her family do culminate in the last book with some intense scenes between Léger and her mother. So if you read them, I would save The White Dress for last. I read the first two out of order and I don’t think it made a difference, although I won’t know for sure until I reread them (and I plan on rereading them).
Each book tells the story of a different woman in history, and in each one Léger thinks through that woman’s story to understand her own. This idea of “thinking through” a story, a book, a person’s life, in order to understand one’s own is a big part of Kate Zambreno’s writing and one reason I like it so much. Léger and Zambreno both weave contemplations of the writing and art of other people with their own thoughts and experiences, and in each case, this feels like a tribute to the writer/artist under consideration instead of an appropriation. They set their stories next to someone else’s and let them coexist, so the reader can make connections between the two. Both stories breathe and have their own life and fit together — and fail to fit together — in ways readers can intuit on their own.
In Léger’s case, the stories she thinks through are, in Exposition, the Countess of Castiglione who lived in the 19th century at the very beginning of photography and had herself photographed hundreds of times (a whole, whole lot for her day). Suite for Barbara Loden is about Loden’s life and her film Wanda. The White Dress tells the story of Pippa Bacca, an Italian performance artist who hitchhiked across Europe toward the Middle East in a wedding dress to promote peace — and was raped and murdered.
Over the course of the books, we learn about Léger’s parents, their unhappy marriage and disastrous divorce, the woman Léger’s father fell in love with who lived next door. We follow Léger as she does her research, traveling into archives and museums, hunting down the places Wanda was filmed, seeking out interviews with people who knew her research subjects personally.
The books are about art and what it’s like to be a woman, and in particular what it’s like to be a woman artist and a woman turned into art. They are about justice and how and whether women can find it. They are about desiring, longing, despairing, frustrated women. They ask, what is the relationship between identity and image? What do you do if just want to disappear, or to completely remake your life? Can art change the world and if so, how? Can a woman find justice in a world run by men? What control does a woman have over her life, her self, her body, her image?
Somehow, the books are both easy to read and they ask that you take your time with them. They work through juxtaposition, shifting quickly from the book’s central figure to Léger’s life and back. It’s not hard to follow where Léger is taking the story, although sometimes it can take a paragraph or two to figure out exactly where she’s situated and where she’s heading. But then everything clicks and you see how the stories fit together and you stop and think about it for a while before moving on. Léger creates a sense of richness, that feeling that the book is much longer than it actually is. Which, in this case, is a good thing.
Don’t Forget About
Violation by Sallie Tisdale (Hawthorn Books, 2016): This is one of my favorite essay collections ever. Tisdale writes about many things — medicine, Buddhism, the body, animals — and each subject, no matter what it is, becomes fascinating in her hands. She has a wonderful — wonderful!! — essay about flies. There’s another great essay on elephants. The attention to detail, the wisdom, the specificity, the experiences, the way she has with sentences — it’s all great.
Publishing This Week
New books I haven’t yet read that are going on my TBR:
The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington (New York Review of Books): A surrealist novel originally published in 1976. According to the publisher, “The novel begins in the bourgeois comfort of a residential corner of a Mexican city and ends with a man-made apocalypse that promises to usher in the earth’s rebirth.”
Slash and Burn by Claudia Hernández , translated by Julia Sanches (And Other Stories): A story of women’s struggles in the midst of political violence in an unnamed Latin American country, focusing on one woman’s quest to keep her daughters safe.
Newly Acquired
If You Kept a Record of Sins by Andrea Bajani, translated by Elizabeth Harris (Archipelago Books, publishing March 2, 2021): I got this as a review copy from the publisher. The story of a young man whose mother left her home in Italy to build a business in Romania. Now he’s traveling to Romania for her funeral and contemplating his life and modern-day Europe.
Reel Bay: A Cinematic Essay by Jana Larson (Coffee House Press, publishing January 19, 2021): Another review copy from the publisher. This is a genre-bending nonfiction book about Jana Larson’s obsession with Takako Konishi, who was found dead in North Dakota in mysterious circumstances.
Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, translated by David Boyd and Sam Bett (Europa Editions, 2020): Our local independent bookstore, Byrds Books, had a sale last week, and I pick this and the next book up there. I’ve heard so many good things about this! It tells the story of three women in Japan and is about contemporary womanhood.
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein (Europa Editions, 2014): The third Neapolitan novel from Elena Ferrante. I read the second in the series last November and loved it. Who knows when I’ll pick this up, but at least I’m ready for when the mood hits.
Currently Reading
Everything Like Before: Stories by Kjell Askildsen, translated by Seán Kinsella (Archipelago Books, publishing April 27, 2021): Realistic short stories from Norway. I’m reading this to write a review for Foreword Reviews.
The Tradition by Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press, 2019): I read poetry for the first time in a long time last year (poetry that I’m not planning to teach, that is), and I’d like to keep it up. (It was Rachel Zucker’s book MOTHERs that inspired me to begin again.)
Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen (Algonquin Books, 2020): My current audiobook. This is set in a small town in Northern Ireland and it’s a fun novel to listen to because of the narrator’s accent. I’m liking it so far.
The Cormac Report
Cormac reads on his own, but my husband and I always have at least one book we are reading to him out loud. Currently, we’re making our way through the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and we’re on the second book (read entirely by my husband, in this case, since he cares about Lord of the Rings in a way I don’t). Occasionally Cormac gets a little restless since the books are … is it fair to say they are slow? Probably. But he’s doing great with them. It helps a ton that he loves the movies. Without having seen those, I’m not sure he’d want to stick with it, but comparing the books and movies adds another layer of interest. It’s all about finding his particular way into a book.
Have a great week everyone!
Well done, once again! I have read two of the triptych and just picked up Exposition last week, based on the first two. I think you will enjoy If You Kept A Record of Sins.