The American Woman in the Chinese Hat

by Carole Maso

“An intense, incantatory, erotic novel . . . An exquisitely calibrated evocation of longing and lust.”— Vogue
 
Abandoned by her lover of ten years and devastated by the painful death of her brother, an American writer named Catherine comes to live and heal her wounds in the lush, crisp, light-dappled French Riviera. But the sensual magic of summertime only underscores Catherine’s longing, as she falls deeper and deeper into an irretrievable madness. With passionate abandon and detachment, Catherine pursues her own destruction through brief but irresistible sexual encounters with an Arlesian woman, a fireman, a poet, and three thieves, until she meets Lucien, a man who looks as if he “stepped out of an unmade film by dead Truffant,” and who she senses to be her match in solitude and beauty. Through this mysterious, doomed, bittersweet liaison Catherine makes one last attempt to halt her decline, only to face the shattering, inevitable conclusion of this mesmerizing drama of sex, betrayal, and dissolution.
 
Author Carole Maso’s nuanced storytelling manipulates language with the graceful precision of a stained glass artisan—refracting reality, casting light, and dazzling with color the erotic adventures of a woman and the inner life of an artist inspired and doomed by desire.
 
“Gorgeous . . . an outpouring of passion.”— San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Terse, musical and hypnotic . . . Maso tracks with horrifying authenticity the downward spiral of Catherine’s depression.”— Los Angeles Times
 
“A fever dream of love and sanctuary.”— Elle

Genres: Fiction, Erotica, LGBT, Novels, American, Queer, Bisexual

209 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Carole Maso is a contemporary American novelist and essayist, known for her experimental, poetic and fragmentary narratives often labeled as postmodern. She received a bachelor’s degree in English from Vassar College in 1977. Her first published novel was Ghost Dance, which appeared in 1986. Her best known novel is probably Defiance, which was published in 1998. Currently (2006) she is a professor of English at Brown University. She has previously held positions as a writer-in-residence at Illinois State and George Washington University, as well as teaching writing at Columbia University.

Reviews

[Garima · Rating 4 out of 5]

She tries to imagine a self that does not yearn. A changeless, a final, a permanent self.

The American woman in the Chinese hat. The American woman in the Chinese hat with a notebook who writes and cries, cries and writes. The American woman in the Chinese hat with a notebook who writes and cries in France. Une femme inconnue. In spite of blues galore, this woman makes her amorphous tale irresistible. She is intimate with the unfairness of love but her desire is a compulsive player. She is deranged in a world where no one is acquainted with her sanity and can’t pass a definite judgment about how she was and how she should be. Sounds like freedom and she uses it too. One can visualize her narration in shades of black and white where things that are discernible belongs to a dream sequence and the vibrant reality takes a backseat until one reluctantly wakes up from a peaceful sleep.

I notice I say oui to things I would never say oui to in my own country. For some reason it does not seem unreasonable.

Instead of walking, she seems to be floating in this new country where the pain of a broken heart is becoming one with a fatal obsession. Being willfully caught in the treacherous beauty of a stranger, she tries to release herself from the longing of an old flame and then she writes about it. As if every joy in life is desperate to turn into a cruel irony, The American woman in the Chinese hat cries while writing a roman d’amour. And day after day, she makes a list of memories to hold on to before deciding about the ones which are easy to let go without realizing that whatever little shall remain in the end would probably resemble a waiflike silhouette waiting for a final strike to disappear forever.

I have given up too much, I think, to write the handful of stories I have written. I have given up too much to be the person capable of writing them.

Her fear of an imminent ending makes her leave several thoughts mid-sentence only to prolong their stay for few more pages before completing them. She formulate new stories with old characters that satisfy her like a small child and then for a moment or two she becomes someone else, someone pushing the limits of language with an arresting curiosity about different meanings of a single word, about single meaning of several words. The collage of her emotions is laden with sadness and her neurotic ways gets irksome sometimes but it’s alright. It’s alright because she knows how to explore her genius- her sensuous, inexorable genius.

After the book is out for a year and has gone into paperback, we must finally face the fact that I will never make any real money; that I’m just not that kind of writer.

It’s alright because she’s not that kind of writer.

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not set out to read consecutive books about young American women living alone in France. It just happened. First, The Dud Avocado, and then immediately this. The coincidence, nevertheless, begs comparison. The Dud Avocado creates a wonderful character, Sally Jay Gorce, someone I might not like in real life; but the book, in Sally Jay's first person, creates a unique voice. And that voice carries through from start to finish. I was highly entertained.

The American Woman in the Chinese Hat is in the 'voice' of Catherine. Catherine is a writer, living with Lola. Catherine has many affairs. Lola has one. Fair's fair, I sez; but Catherine instead flees to France.* She takes her notebook, her cahier with her. Cause, you know, she's a writer. So she writes down what she sees: the light, the flowers, the man by the fountain. Voilà, a novel.

That's unfair of me. That's not a novel. You have to repeat everything, over and over. Words, phrases, sentences, dialogue. But that's unfair too. Because that would be old school, not experimental or - what is it? - post-modern or something. To make sure, change from the first-person to the third-person, willy-nilly, because, you know, art.

So:

I am the woman in the Chinese hat.
I am the woman in the Chinese hat that writes.
I am the woman in the Chines hat that writes and cries.

She cries.

The roses are yellow. There is a man at the fountain. He has cheveux longs. He has a Kenzo t-shirt.

Côtes du Rhône.

She cries.

(Cue in Madame Butterfly and Death in Venice references. Often.)

American Republican politicians are stupid. Every one. So are their wives.

Row, row, row your boat.

The man at the fountain has cheveux longs. He wears a Kenzo t-shirt.

She cries.

She is just a woman in a white room, that's all. It doesn't mean anything. She can't remember what it means. She opens her legs.

Someone is reading Death in Venice. Someone is listening to Madame Butterfly. The roses are yellow. Someone is drinking Côtes du Rhône.

She cries.

Maybe he is inside her now. She can't be sure. The body a last vague----

Nancy Reagan is stupid.

She cries.

I am the woman in the Chinese hat who writes and cries.**

______________________________________________
*Early on she asks for avocados. I don't want to make too much out of that. But, you know: homage.

**Annoyed? Then don't read this book. I left the sex out of my review, but the sex, although abundant, did not redeem this weepy self-indulgence.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes I travel to get away from myself. It never works. My heart bleeds into me no matter where I am, no matter how foreign the surroundings, the sounds, the people. When I read Carole Maso, I am consciously not running away. I dig into the wounds, I let her words seep into me, and every few paragraphs I look away from the page and drift on a sea of hurt and longing. Autumn is the perfect season for this book, with its chilling breeze and falling leaves. And you do need to be in the right mood or it will not work.

Carole Maso speaks to me. The first half of this book is a most perfect distillation of the pain and desire that coalesce around a broken heart. I can understand how someone wouldn't get this book, I do. But do you know what? I'm not that person. I am in this book and when I read it, I go back over lines to make sure I didn't miss anything, any expression or shape of pain that fits the mould ready and waiting inside me. Those moments of soul-crushing emptiness, when everything falls to pieces. For a book with so few words, I spent many hours with it in my hands. It's a distracted sort of love. The last third of the book was a slow fade-out to nothingness that drifted beyond my grasp. Maybe that's meaningful, or maybe I reached a saturation point.

Still. The way she writes unlocks a place of sadness that I carry inside me.

The American woman in the Chinese hat often cries in public. I don't, not usually anyway. Some years ago, I went out to a bar with some people I didn't know all that well. I had a few drinks, drank too much possibly, and soon I was in the bathroom crying uncontrollably. Me, the girl who always keeps it together. I couldn't explain it. It was the weight of some unspoken grief, some desperate unhappiness that found a breach to well up in me that night and once the tears started flowing, I couldn't stop them. A friend's girlfriend smiled and told me, You look so beautiful when you cry. I will never forget that.

And that is how I feel about this book. This threnody, this dirge for love.

[Nathália · Rating 5 out of 5]

A refreshing splash of lust under the French Riviera sun.

As usual with Maso, this is another piece of longing in her puzzle of desire. Feels like a deep look into one of the time periods that Aureole encapsulates plus a summery doppelgänger affair reminiscent of the one in Ghost Dance.

Her protagonists feel like partial selves that make up a whole, but with the same unmistakable hungry and reaching essence. Whether Caroline, Catherine, Vanessa, the recognizable elements are always distinctively there, much like a birth mark or an irreplicable glance. Endless longing, nostalgia for the present, loss - either through AIDS, transformation, language failure, among others. Pulsating sexuality, art, pain, incompleteness, repetition… word porn déjà vu.

A pleasure.

[Andrew]

American writers kinda suck at lyricism, something that the French excel at. Carole Maso, whose The Art Lover was a beautifully lyrical, coiled thing, has produced a more or less pure work of lyricism. And I love, love, love that shit. Dreamy, drifting from place to place, with an odd obsession with French firefighters, occasional hookups with shady fascists, lots of wine, lots of crying, lots of experience in the space between two languages. I get the feeling Maso isn't much read anymore, but she really ought to be.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gay (for the most part) and naughty (literally always). Obv enjoyed

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Treat yourself to a lovely novel this fine day.

[Marc Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

Video review https://youtu.be/kGbqnvBMq5o

[Kaylee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was insane. Part one, I had no idea what was happening at all. She’d just say a bunch of stuff and then cry and have sex. The whole time I was like “What’s going on? Boom, sex. Wait, now what’s happening? Oh, she’s having sex.” Which I thought was the point and part of the fun of the book. Part one is very gay and French (love). But then, part two and three get increasingly less gay and just more depressing. Then the ending???? What???

Overall, confusing and depressing book but still entertaining and a good book to practice my French. 3/5 stars

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️

[amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

i can read this book over and over and love it every time. it is painful and achingly beautiful, each page a poem full of loss and mourning and loving and searching. if you haven't read carol maso, start here.

[Melanie Sweeney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maso excels at depicting profound loneliness and a dazzling love of the world. In this book, she taps once again into the melancholy, but instead of hopeful, it is a darker story about descent into madness and the ultimate loss of self. The use of French throughout is a nice surprise for anyone with a rudimentary French vocabulary, but it also demonstrates limitations, which are echoed in the content of Catherine's story -- limitations of art and of words, limitations of love, limitations of the self. Compared to Ghost Dance, The Art Lover, and AVA, this book steps beyond what might be considered general hopefulness about the healing capacity of art to reveal the bleak future when art fails to work.

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was given to me by a friend. Sexually compulsive American woman is dumped by her girlfriend, heads to France intending to work on writing, instead gets tanked and humps everything in sight. Lyrical, sad, at times very moving, but I didn't think the writing was good enough to endure an entire book's worth of a sad person making horrible decisions. And I usually love dark fiction! This book also has LOTS of motifs (beaches/emptiness and longing, lesbian erotica/fountains, birds/capriciousness, etc etc etc etc X infinity).

[Mina-Louise]

Tender and raw.

At times the way she included the French language felt forced. Clumsy. It loosens up, or I get used to it. She is learning French in the book, but it find the single words and half sentences slightly grating and unappealing. It might be that way by design, I’m unsure. But it doesn’t come across as honest.
The scene setting also grows more natural, and I feel like the first 30 pages could have done with some better editing. Too much fluff and filler to transport the reader. I went into the book already transported.
When she comes to the emotions, the pain, the sex-- that’s her element. She completely knocks me down. No one does it better. All of a sudden I’m in the midst of questions I’ve been avoiding asking myself. And I want to live in her writing.

‘She says I never loved her enough. She says I’ve been very cruel. She begins to list my crimes. But I scarcely remember being that woman.’

She writes in a very inviting way. I want to stay. Even when it hurts.

‘I left often, sometimes for months, to write. I seduced her brother. I slept with the next-door neighbor. I slept with everyone. Often I was cruel, it is true. I was too moody— too angry, too afraid. I was never satisfied. I never loved her the way she needed to be loved.’

Makes me question my own fidelity.

‘I am tired. I will live to be old, I think. I will live to pay for every crime. Even the minor ones. Among the minor ones: I never learned to drive. I could never do the bankbook right.’

...

“I’ve never been with a woman before,” the poet says.
“I know,” I say. “I’ve been watching you all day. But I think you’d like to be.”
“Yes. I guess.”
“With me.”
“Yes.”
I kiss her shoulder, part her lovely legs, sail across the perfect surface of skin, sweetly.

“My god,” she says later that night. “No wonder men are crazy for women!” She is the type that talks. “Women are so tender, and soft and warm and wet and incredible!” She is used to describing everything. And I am on my knees this time, and she is already screaming.’

No comment.

‘I tell her the heart is more fragile than fruit. It can’t be handled tenderly enough.’

A sentence to live by, isn’t it.

‘There is so much longing in me. I feel the strange, erotic shape of each day.’

‘Only touch is not a lie.’

(I desperately want that sentence to be true)

‘Touch, too, is a terrible lie.’

(Unfortunately I know this one to be just as true)

Women, fascists, threesomes with thieves, a devastatingly beautiful man. More women. Heartbreak.

The book is full of lovers. The word lover. A word that makes it all seem worth it in a way.

‘But he is unknowable and I don’t feel like making him up.’

I’m here for the internal. And the between. She does it so deliciously.

[Elise · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think The American Woman in the Chinese hat is beautiful, original, and poetic, but it may be an acquired taste. The protagonist, Catherine, is searching for herself and her inspiration in the southern French coastal city of Vence after being dumped by her long time lover, Lola. This leads to a series of meaningless affairs that seem like a kind of self-flagellation for hurting Lola until Catherine meets the beautiful man, Lucien, drinking from the fountain in the town square, Lucien, the stunning man of the “cheveux longue” (long hair) who seems to move as if in slow motion through amber and whose eyes, because of his self-imposed solitude, are described at first by Catherine as “les fleurs du mal” (the flowers of evil a la Baudelaire). If you are looking for a linear tale that makes rational sense from beginning to end, avoid this one, but if you are looking for a novel of strange poetic beauty that will inspire you, The American Woman in the Chinese hat might be for you. I was in France in 1990, so this book speaks to me partially because, unlike Catherine, I was somewhat cautious and sensible (at least in comparison to our protagonist here) but isn’t that the great thing about fiction, being able to live vicariously through fictional characters without completely self-destructing? And what an unforgettable, sensual journey this is. There is something in the imagery and tone of this book that is apocalyptic because it takes place at the end of the 20th century, and Catherine is an American from NYC who has just witnessed her older brother die of AIDS, and she is searching for a new beginning or some kind of ending. Catherine is a writer who is known as the stranger in the town, the American woman who wears a Chinese hat, drinks, cries, and writes in her “cahier” (notebook) incessantly. She shifts in her perspective from first to third person, even when describing herself and her own firsthand experience, as she seems to be seeing herself through the writer’s gaze. This book is gorgeous and complex, and every sentence is a delightful surprise, a wave to ride on. It takes place during one summer where roses swell and pulse, where Gypsies walk through the town with pet goats, where ancient castles that stand sentry over the town house paintings by Picasso and other early 20th century giants of art, where the desert travels in on the sirocco, where figs and olives fall in abundance from the trees. It is a world I could thoroughly enjoy without a passport or an annoyingly long flight in a too small seat. I highly recommend this one.

[Zadignose]

Part One: A self-centered depressive/bipolar/borderline-personality-case mopes around Paris and has random sexual encounters with strangers in between bouts of self-pity and the occasional euphoric realization that sitting in a café on a bright day and sipping alcohol is really, really nifty!

Parts Two & Three: I haven't read them yet. Maybe I will someday.

For what I've read, I can't call this bad. It's not. But I'm not so thrilled to be reading it either. Perhaps, like Catherine's American friends, I'm getting a little worn out from trying to care about her.

And if my comment about her depression, etc., seems unfairly dismissive, let me recognize that, actually, a reader who has similar mood issues to Catherine's might well find this quite affecting because of its (presumable) accurate understanding of what depression can be.

And regarding Steven Moore's embrace of this book, it's a little surprising in that the book is, so far, quite humorless, and Moore is a real advocate for humor and irony, but of course he can have eclectic taste and all that. He also often values style over matters of plot and character-likability. Fair enough. But, as for style, it's just not as charmant for me as it is meant to be.

[Ronald Morton · Rating 5 out of 5]

One does whatever one must. One walks through fire if necessary, through light. Attracted to it like moths. One swims in treacherous waters like poor trout, brochette. Attracted to it like salmon to their deaths.

[...]

There is so much longing in me.

The book opens with the narrator sitting in a bar in Vence, France watching other couple kissing – “everyone here is kissing everyone” – an activity from which she withholds herself – “I’m not kissing anyone; I’m waiting for her” – as she thinks of her distant lover – still in America, in New York – who will travel shortly to join her. The opening chapters are awash in the anticipation of reunion, until the narrator is informed that Lola, the one waited for, has met another, and will not be coming.

The narrator begins to breakdown. She wanders through the resort village in which she is staying – she ventures further out into France – meeting strangers, taking lovers, and writing in her notebook. The act of writing is continuous throughout the book. The act of writing begins to blend into the narration itself, and the notebook creations slowly meld and become indiscernible from the – maybe true – narrative. The narrator begins to refer to herself as “she” on occasion.

Often these days she finds she refers to herself in the third person as if she were someone else. Watching from afar. Inventing someone to be - like everyone.

As the story progress the presence of the I begins to recede, and the She the narrator held at a distance - or possibly the fictive notebook version of the narrator – comes to prominence, with entire chapters narrated in the third person, with singular glimpses of the “I” reaching the surface of the narrative.

I bruise easily. I go under.

Through all of this there is a supple eroticism and poetry contained with the prose – the language is, at times, highly charged and sexual.

I suck the dark fruit of our oblivion. Something opens that cannot be closed. And I am swollen with it, and I am soaked in it. "You are delicious," I say.
"Et toi!" We are floating. I cannot say what ripens in me.

But the danger of oblivion, of the I becoming completely sublimated into the She threatens throughout the book, and at times the reader will be overcome by anxiety at the long third person narrative stretches, wondering if the I will ever surface again. The narrator herself recognizes this potential for loss – she seems to long for the obliteration of self at times – and acknowledges this in the text.

She feels beauty and then the absence of beauty. She feels the absence of all things. She does not cry. She just stands there and feels herself being stripped of everything. She feels all things being taken away.

This book was a pleasure to read – once begun I only wanted to stay up late to finish it (I’m old, so I could not) – the writing is precise, the juggling act of the I and She narration is perfectly executed, and the writer’s descent into madness is heartbreaking. An excellent work.

[Karin Jacobson · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, Maso's prose is addictive. I read and reread paragraphs like this one: "Often she tried to hold back despair, stave off depression with another affair. To lose herself there. In dazzling silence with a stranger. Where everything disappeared, every place, every name. Until she became a blank page." Maso loves the word "dazzling," the idea of the blank page, liminal spaces filled with possibility. I've tried teaching her books (not this one--too erotic), but my students always dislike her, finding her language too self-absorbed, too pretentious.

[Drianne · Rating 1 out of 5]

I *hated* this incredibly depressing, pointlessly over-written book about a 'tortured artist'. Bah! I read Sylvia Plath in hs, thank you very much, and have no need to revisit *any* of that. Maso should use her powers of language for good, not evil. An American writer goes to the south of France to try to get over her depression, but simply spirals out of control into a world of self-conscious self-fashioning through sex, language, and madness. Not recommended.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has literary merit, but does not make for a good read. The best thing about this book is that it is lyrical and well written. It is hard to keep track of what is going on plot-wise. The point of view switches from first person to third person (i.e. Catherine refers to herself in third person). It is hard to understand who she is talking about sometimes. I do not recommend this book because (in my opinion)the book's merits do not outweigh the annoying things about it.

[Marian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really fragmented with lots of glittering sentences. Not sure about the ending. A little hard to like this narrator: she's pretty self-involved and spends the book feeling sorry for herself because her girlfriend of 10 years finally breaks up with her after she spends a decade cheating on and mistreating her.

[Emmi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh! Awful!

[Colleen Fava · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will always be a top ten for me. Carole Maso let me know that a book can be a book... it doesn't strictly need to be poetry or fiction or memoir. This tale is stunningly, woven together.

[Rory O'Loughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a book i would normally pick up. Daughter recommended it. Very much a prose/poem with short chapters. It drifts between first and 3rd person narrative as the protagonist grieves over a relationship just ended. and tries to move on. Set in Vence, France it is sprinkled with french phrases and some very brief sexual events (more graphic than i am used to). A short read at 199 pages, it took a while for me as I was not driven to pick it up.

below is a writing sample:

chapter 20
My favorite waitress, the one who saie "Maybe he is dancing" comes dressed in black and white silk pants, a midriff top: her shift starts at eleven. She is beautiful again today.
Tenir. Tenir is to hold. These months suddenly gon.
Let her hold them all here once more. The people of the patisseries, the butchers, the pompiers. The youn at La Victoire, and the Bambou, and La Regence. Vence Fleurs. Parosols. Les fruits, les legumes. Let her hold them one more moment. The marbled European cats. The old, aging in this place ten kilometers from the sea. Church bells ring. The women haul wooden cates. Everything begins to close for dejeuner. She holds these streets she's memorized: the rue du Marche, avenue de la Resistance, the Place Antony Mars.
This man by the fountain.
"Lucien!"
He smiles. Kisses her twice on the cheeks.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

This tale of an author's summer jaunt to France taking a dark turn when she's dumped by her lover in New York has all of the best ingredients of Maso's work in general: prose poetry, ambiguity, dark humor, and erotic longing. I admit I thought the doomed and destructive fling with Lucien went on a bit long and weakened the narrative tension. But this is nonetheless a powerful story of a psyche (or is it a civilization?) slowly disintegrating.

[Karis Moon! · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this book was fairly short in length, the impression and feelings it left are so large. I caught myself re-reading many pages over and over. And not because I was distracted or confused, but so I could fully digest every word.

Maso puts so much into every single sentence that if you aren’t careful it’s easy to miss the entire point of what she’s saying. The chapters weren’t technically poems, but they might have as well been. Maso’s writing feels so fluid, it feels wrong to call it anything other than poetry. And I’m sure many of her statements went right over my head but I enjoyed the majority of the book.

My complaints solely stem from the storyline. It begins with a happy woman who is in love, then within a page she’s heartbroken. The rest of the story runs itself in a circle. Sad woman cries, sad woman has sex, cries more, she maybe finds someone else to love so she has more sex but it doesn’t work out which leads to more crying.

The first half was beautiful. The second half was repetitive and the last five to ten pages felt like a metaphor I simply didn’t understand. All to say, I wouldn’t directly recommend this book but I’d love to talk about it.

[T.C. Mill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read both this and Aureole, I found the latter both more lyrical and sexier. This one has more of a narrative, in the sense that it has paragraphs of prose that describe consecutive actions, but the actions don't add up to as much of an impact.

[Mia · Rating 5 out of 5]

experimental in style and def not for everyone but Extremely for Me. if u approach it w the understanding that the narrator is slowly (and then very quickly) losing her sanity, the writing style makes a lot more sense

[Brooke W · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I'm in love with her, I decide, the cashier from the Prisunic. I'm in love with the man standing here now. One wants to be in love through this. It is a small protection against the overwhelming desire to suffer… Only touch is not a lie.”

[Adam Swanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book blew my mind. So grateful. Maso is a TREASURE.