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Sans Moi
The narrator of Sans Moi is a working single mother struggling to bring up her two young children. Olivia is a recovering drug addict and onetime prostitute who desperately needs a job. When Olivia—on the face of it a highly unsuitable babysitter—moves in, trailing her chaotic past behind her, their lives collide with unexpected results. In the year they live together, companionship, intimacy, and humor create a friendship full of vitality and mutual respect—as well as something of a family life. Marie Desplechin details this emotional terrain with delicate grace and irony. At once desperate and hopeful, Sans Moi explores the nature of friendship and the complicated dynamics of learning how to love and be loved.
220 pages, Hardcover
First published August 26, 1998
4 people are currently reading
84 people want to read
About the author
Marie Desplechin
122 books32 followersMarie Desplechin has written over thirty books for children and adults, and is published internationally. Enormously popular in her native France, she has twenty-two first cousins, feels most comfortable in the kitchen, and has always dreamed of living in the 19th century.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 9, 2017
A divorced woman living in Paris with two young kids hires a 23-year old prostitute (supposedly ex-) and drug user (supposedly ex-) to be her kids’ babysitter. In the first go-round the mother has to chase away drug dealers who come to the door looking for the young woman. The story is one of the evolving relationship between the two women as they learn to help each other and even save each other in times of impending disaster.
The live in a Paris apartment. Both women have busy sexual lives with multiple male companions, some of whom are married men. The older woman is in love with a man she does not go out with. The younger woman occasionally goes to orgies, among other things. There are hints of a homoerotic relationship developing between the women but it doesn’t blossom in this story.
Little by little the mother (and we, the readers) learn of the harsh past life of this 23-year old. She comes from a bizarre dysfunctional family with anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant attitudes and where the goings-on involve drugs, violence, child molestation and incest.
I really enjoyed the author’s writing style so I have included a number of quotes below to illustrate.
The main character writes free-lance PR copy for a living, always wondering where next week’s paycheck is coming from. She hates this kind of work. But when she completes a job, this tells us how she think of herself. “I was no longer just a divorced, spendthrift, disorganized woman, but the heroic captain of a ship in a storm.” She also says “I promise you no one ever read a line of anything I wrote.”
“I’d compare my professional activities to those of an embalmer. I’d be given a pile of decomposing lies which had to be made presentable by means of a laborious patchwork of generalities, untruths and utterly meaningless phrases. The great skill lay in in preserving an appearance of reality while gutting the document of its contents and stuffing it with hay.”
She’s hired to write the history of a bank. (Imagine how many people will ever read that!). Furiously taking notes while the bank’s PR person talks, she thinks: “I’m planning, shamelessly, to serve them back to her – there’s nothing people enjoy quite so much as their own reheated inanities.”
“My job was to rewrite this hodgepodge, not to give it any meaning but to clothe it in a form which simulated thought…finding in the hackneyed mess something like the aftertaste of real thought.”
Here is how she prays: “Lord, since all of You is contained in even the smallest fragment Your Creation, You must be somewhere in my crappy life as well. Besides I think I can hear You snoring. If You could wake up and give me a little hand, that would be good. You’ve done it for other people, so why not me?”
Of one of her male friends: “All he expected of me was a pair of trousers that looked good on me, and a certain ease in the removal of these trousers a little later in the evening.”
Of her female roommate and children’s nanny: [She] ...spoke under her breath as if she dreaded the sound of her voice.”
On seeing her ex- arrive to pick up the kids on weekends: “I was always happy seeing them together. It gave me a sense of peace, a vague sense of achievement which lasted a while after they’d left, like a scent which hangs in the air and then fades.”
“…grievances thrive in married life like mushrooms in damp ground. You can always pick them and serve them up in an omelet. Provided you bend down. Search through the mud. Risk being poisoned.”
“Looking back, I realize that confessions emerge like icebergs. At first you see the tip poking out of the water…You haven’t seen anything coming but suddenly there it is, rolling on the water, massive and mountainous, giving you vertigo, blocking off the horizon.”
“He was sorry he’d gone to his parents’, sorry his father wasn’t dead yet – although he wasn’t even very sure about that, a dead father might be even more of a burden that a living father, even a bastard of a living father. The problem was simply having a father at all.”
She sees a couple kiss on the street: “If this kiss hadn’t already been given I’d gladly take it.”
“Music is pounding out of the first-floor windows; the building might explode if they were closed.”
Overall I give the book a 4 for the story but I am really impressed with the literary punch as you can tell from the quotes above. The book (“Without Me”) is translated from the French. The author is mainly a writer of children’s books but we can hope for more novels if they are all this good.
Top photo from parisforrent.com
Bottom from the healthypassport.com
The live in a Paris apartment. Both women have busy sexual lives with multiple male companions, some of whom are married men. The older woman is in love with a man she does not go out with. The younger woman occasionally goes to orgies, among other things. There are hints of a homoerotic relationship developing between the women but it doesn’t blossom in this story.
Little by little the mother (and we, the readers) learn of the harsh past life of this 23-year old. She comes from a bizarre dysfunctional family with anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant attitudes and where the goings-on involve drugs, violence, child molestation and incest.
I really enjoyed the author’s writing style so I have included a number of quotes below to illustrate.
The main character writes free-lance PR copy for a living, always wondering where next week’s paycheck is coming from. She hates this kind of work. But when she completes a job, this tells us how she think of herself. “I was no longer just a divorced, spendthrift, disorganized woman, but the heroic captain of a ship in a storm.” She also says “I promise you no one ever read a line of anything I wrote.”
“I’d compare my professional activities to those of an embalmer. I’d be given a pile of decomposing lies which had to be made presentable by means of a laborious patchwork of generalities, untruths and utterly meaningless phrases. The great skill lay in in preserving an appearance of reality while gutting the document of its contents and stuffing it with hay.”
She’s hired to write the history of a bank. (Imagine how many people will ever read that!). Furiously taking notes while the bank’s PR person talks, she thinks: “I’m planning, shamelessly, to serve them back to her – there’s nothing people enjoy quite so much as their own reheated inanities.”
“My job was to rewrite this hodgepodge, not to give it any meaning but to clothe it in a form which simulated thought…finding in the hackneyed mess something like the aftertaste of real thought.”
Here is how she prays: “Lord, since all of You is contained in even the smallest fragment Your Creation, You must be somewhere in my crappy life as well. Besides I think I can hear You snoring. If You could wake up and give me a little hand, that would be good. You’ve done it for other people, so why not me?”
Of one of her male friends: “All he expected of me was a pair of trousers that looked good on me, and a certain ease in the removal of these trousers a little later in the evening.”
Of her female roommate and children’s nanny: [She] ...spoke under her breath as if she dreaded the sound of her voice.”
On seeing her ex- arrive to pick up the kids on weekends: “I was always happy seeing them together. It gave me a sense of peace, a vague sense of achievement which lasted a while after they’d left, like a scent which hangs in the air and then fades.”
“…grievances thrive in married life like mushrooms in damp ground. You can always pick them and serve them up in an omelet. Provided you bend down. Search through the mud. Risk being poisoned.”
“Looking back, I realize that confessions emerge like icebergs. At first you see the tip poking out of the water…You haven’t seen anything coming but suddenly there it is, rolling on the water, massive and mountainous, giving you vertigo, blocking off the horizon.”
“He was sorry he’d gone to his parents’, sorry his father wasn’t dead yet – although he wasn’t even very sure about that, a dead father might be even more of a burden that a living father, even a bastard of a living father. The problem was simply having a father at all.”
She sees a couple kiss on the street: “If this kiss hadn’t already been given I’d gladly take it.”
“Music is pounding out of the first-floor windows; the building might explode if they were closed.”
Overall I give the book a 4 for the story but I am really impressed with the literary punch as you can tell from the quotes above. The book (“Without Me”) is translated from the French. The author is mainly a writer of children’s books but we can hope for more novels if they are all this good.
Top photo from parisforrent.com
Bottom from the healthypassport.com
July 15, 2020
I must have set some sort of record in reading this book. At the back is a little note: Started reading on 10 August 2006. I used to mark entries like this on my books, in those days when we didn’t have these fancy websites or apps for our book recording.
And now, here I am a good 14 years later finally finishing the book! Give me a pat on the back, will you?
A hit in France when it was first published, it’s a satirical, often-funny tale that speaks of the friendship between two women. Lovely. I should have loved it. But apart from certain passages that made me chuckle, and a beautiful scene toward the end, I found the narrator a bit hard to warm up to. That’s what made me glad to reach the end.
But still. I read this! Goes to show, never say never.
There will always be THAT book on your shelf that will suddenly invite yourself into your life now. This one waited patiently for 14 years. We met, lived together for a long while, and now we part. Life.
And now, here I am a good 14 years later finally finishing the book! Give me a pat on the back, will you?
A hit in France when it was first published, it’s a satirical, often-funny tale that speaks of the friendship between two women. Lovely. I should have loved it. But apart from certain passages that made me chuckle, and a beautiful scene toward the end, I found the narrator a bit hard to warm up to. That’s what made me glad to reach the end.
But still. I read this! Goes to show, never say never.
There will always be THAT book on your shelf that will suddenly invite yourself into your life now. This one waited patiently for 14 years. We met, lived together for a long while, and now we part. Life.
July 17, 2008
L'histoire n'est pas exceptionnelle, j'avais peur de tomber sur un des romans français écrits par des femmes qui n'ont rien à dire comme Katherine Pancol pour ne citer personne. Mais à la réflexion, la différence entre un bon bouquin et un autre n'est pas l'histoire mais le talent avec laquelle elle est racontée et je dois dire que Marie Desplechin a le mot juste, la belle métaphore, le style dynamique.
Mon seul regret est la fin inexplicablement précipitée, un peu bâclée à mon goût.
N.B. : il y a quelques années, j'ai lu "un homme à distance" de Katherine Pancol que j'avais trouvé très correct à l'époque. Mes goûts changent et quand je relirai cette critique dans quelques années, j'suis sûre de la trouver prétentieuse associé à un manque d'esprit critique évident. Ainsi va la vie !
Mon seul regret est la fin inexplicablement précipitée, un peu bâclée à mon goût.
N.B. : il y a quelques années, j'ai lu "un homme à distance" de Katherine Pancol que j'avais trouvé très correct à l'époque. Mes goûts changent et quand je relirai cette critique dans quelques années, j'suis sûre de la trouver prétentieuse associé à un manque d'esprit critique évident. Ainsi va la vie !
December 17, 2017
Only the French would make this book a Best Seller!? I can't believe
I forced myself to finish it!
I forced myself to finish it!
February 24, 2018
Mielenkiintoinen uusi kirjailijatuttavuus. Tämä kirja muistutti minua -80-luvusta, jolloin katsoin paljon ranskalaisia elokuvia. Samanlaista arvoituksellisuutta oli näissä kirjan naishahmoissa, joiden elämää ja keskinäistä suhdetta kirjassa kuvattiin. Paljon ei tapahdu ja kuitenkin tapahtuu. Molemmilla oli paljon miehiä ja seksuaalista elämää ympärillään, mutta naisten välillä leijaili jonkinlainen homoeroottinen vire.
Kirjan alkuosa viehätti minua paljon, mutta joko kirjasta tai omasta keskittymisestäni johtuen en enää pitänyt loppuosasta, lukeminen muuttui vähän pakkopullaksi ja hidastuikin. Kirjassa oli joka tapauksessa paljon sitä jotain, mitä on vain ranskalaisessa kirjallisuudessa, vähäeleistä eleganssia?
Kirjan alkuosa viehätti minua paljon, mutta joko kirjasta tai omasta keskittymisestäni johtuen en enää pitänyt loppuosasta, lukeminen muuttui vähän pakkopullaksi ja hidastuikin. Kirjassa oli joka tapauksessa paljon sitä jotain, mitä on vain ranskalaisessa kirjallisuudessa, vähäeleistä eleganssia?
December 25, 2017
Hmmmmm Read this in English. This promised to be a reasonably good read (at least the blurb piqued my interest) but I found it to be a plodder, a story which went nowhere. I persevered through Part 1, thinking that Part 2 might bring some more dynamic events into the lives of the two main characters, but that was not the case. Part 2 is more of the same. I skimmed some of it, skipped a lot of it and finally ditched it, having read the last chapter before proceeding any further, only to find the story STILL didn't go anywhere. Maybe it's just me. Others might find it a better read than I did. Go ahead, if you want to try it. It's not a total drudge.
January 14, 2022
why aren’t they kissing
February 16, 2022
Erikoinen opus ja erikoinen ystävyys. Noh. Luettu.
August 16, 2013
It was a wonderful book. So different from the usual "stories". It was about a year in the life of Anna, a writer and a single mother. She hires a young girl Olivia as a babysitter. Olivia is a recovering drug addict with several other issues as well. On the face of it, Olivia is highly unsuitable as a babysitter, but yet she is a person with a lot of promise.
Anna and Olivia help each other out and develop a friendship.
It was likened to a novel by Colette, but it wasn't. Do not look for anything naughty in here.
The book was about faith and trust and healing. Excellent!
Anna and Olivia help each other out and develop a friendship.
It was likened to a novel by Colette, but it wasn't. Do not look for anything naughty in here.
The book was about faith and trust and healing. Excellent!
November 2, 2013
"Sans Moi" is a story of trust and friendship developed by a Parisian mother (and struggling writer) and a young woman she hires to look after her children. The young woman has many issues stemming from a rough and neglectful childhood and has been bounced around from place to place and job to job. Oddly, the mother hired her despite knowing her past history with drug use. We learn in snippets of dialogue and prose about the young woman's sordid past and see the mother through her struggles. Ironically, the one you would assume needs saving is simply not so. An interesting read.
May 15, 2013
questo libro fu un grande successo in francia. mi ricordo una vaga sensazione di noia e basta.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews