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Self-Portrait in Green
Who are the green women? They are powerful (one is a disciplinarian teacher). They are mysterious (one haunts a house like a ghost). They are seductive (one marries her best friend’s father). And they are unbearably personal (one is the author’s own mother).
They are all aspects of their Marie NDiaye, an author celebrated worldwide as one of France’s leading writers. Here, in her own skewed take on the memoir, NDiaye combs through all the menacing, beguiling, and revelatory memories submerged beneath the consciousness of a singular literary talent. Mysterious, honest, and unabashedly innovative, NDiaye’s self-portrait forces us all to ask questions—about what we repress, how we discover those things, and how those obsessions become us.
This 10th anniversary hardcover edition of Marie NDiaye’s genre-defying classic restores photographs that appeared in the original French edition alongside Jordan Stump’s dazzling translation, revealing in English, at last, the complete vision of NDiaye’s influential masterpiece.
They are all aspects of their Marie NDiaye, an author celebrated worldwide as one of France’s leading writers. Here, in her own skewed take on the memoir, NDiaye combs through all the menacing, beguiling, and revelatory memories submerged beneath the consciousness of a singular literary talent. Mysterious, honest, and unabashedly innovative, NDiaye’s self-portrait forces us all to ask questions—about what we repress, how we discover those things, and how those obsessions become us.
This 10th anniversary hardcover edition of Marie NDiaye’s genre-defying classic restores photographs that appeared in the original French edition alongside Jordan Stump’s dazzling translation, revealing in English, at last, the complete vision of NDiaye’s influential masterpiece.
88 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2005
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4591 people want to read
About the author
Marie NDiaye
56 books426 followersMarie NDiaye was born in Pithiviers, France, in 1967; spent her childhood with her French mother (her father was Senegalese); and studied linguistics at the Sorbonne. She started writing when she was twelve or thirteen years old and was only eighteen when her first work was published. In 2001 she was awarded the prestigious Prix Femina literary prize for her novel Rosie Carpe, and in 2009, she won the Prix Goncourt for Three Strong Women.
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January 3, 2025
‘Is it a disaster? Or only life?’
The color green is often symbolic of growth and new beginnings, though it can also express envy or jealousy as well. I enjoy dynamic, multi-functional symbols because, like so much in life, you can detect a sense of meaning but in many ways they evade easy categorization. Or like the sirens that blare in the middle of the night to the confusion of the apartment dwellers during Marie NDiaye’s often elusive Self-Portrait in Green we find ‘We don’t know, we’ve forgotten, how to interpret it.’ But still it seems it must point toward something, such as the various women in green that appear throughout this short novella, sometimes a symbol of growth (former best friend turned woman in green that marries her father and is frequently mentioned as expanding in size while her father shrinks), or envy (the woman in green who married a friend’s former lover), or sometimes ‘a kind of green woman I haven’t yet come across,’ where wearing green isn’t a requirement for being a woman in green. An ambiguous autofiction—it is the product of NDiaye being asked to write a memoir—the self-portrait of the title seems to become one less centered on the self and more the self in-relation-to the various women in green that cross her path. Told through scattered diary-esque entries ranging from 2000-2004 and written in a way that captures a surreal unease (beautifully captured by Jordan Stump in a PEN Award-winning translation), Self-Portrait in Green is an elusive and thought provoking little novella.
‘Again the ambiguity, the groping, the unanswered questions about all this green.’
I came to this curious novella by way of Amina Cain discussing the visual quality of the tale, and having read and enjoyed NDiaye’s That Time of Year, I figured she was worth another read. I’m glad I did, and while this book may seem a bit frustrating to some—not unlike That Time of Year the events feel protentous yet obfuscating with something rather off creating a rather unsettling feel—it is one that is best enjoyed by letting it wash over you and feeling companionship with the narrator through your shared uncertainty. A book built on amalgamating details instead of plot, it opens on a scene of impending disaster with a river potentially about to overflow (the river, she observes, is distinctly feminine for this) and this sense of dread is carried through each vignette. Things never quite line up. A friend has a double who acts erratically, a strange object is running amok, a woman standing by a banana tree can’t be observed by the narrators children, or a woman who hangs herself is later witnessed in a grocery store. Everything is on the verge of existence and non-existence and we see how we, too, may be on such a precipice.
‘the belief in the infinity of possibilities, the illusion that you can forever start over again, that every mark made on you lasts a little while then ends up disappearing—all that we no longer have.’
What makes this book so intriguing is the refusal of any concrete center to pin the idea of a woman and green upon. She is instead an shifting symbol seemingly pointing towards a shared idea. She is sometimes an image of brute force, of disdain, and often an idea of for ‘not what was, but what should have been, could have been, had she only made some other choice way back then, and she regrets the choice she made, the path of sorrow.’ She is anywhere and can appear at any time, even after death because ‘how can you even die, simply that, when you live a life of stone, unchanging and immobile?’ Though perhaps the best singular impression of a woman in green is the author’s own mother, despite her not even being in green:
The idea of giving a name to things, like the concept of a woman in green, seems to express the idea of having a power over something or at least a sense of control. Such as the mysterious dark object running around town that the narrator is asked by her children to say what it is—when she can’t she decides instead she hasn’t seen it.
Self-Portrait in Green is strange, surreal, yet rather gorgeous and NDiaye has an excellent control over language meant to feel like losing control. Perhaps it is the very elusiveness that makes it so meaningful, because what is meaning but something we create as a narrative out of the chaos around us. It is a book that, I suspect, rewards close rereads and individual readers will likely find individual meaning within it. I am enthralled with the uniqueness of NDiaye’s works and how—like a woman in green—they haunt your mind for a long time to come.
3.5/5
The color green is often symbolic of growth and new beginnings, though it can also express envy or jealousy as well. I enjoy dynamic, multi-functional symbols because, like so much in life, you can detect a sense of meaning but in many ways they evade easy categorization. Or like the sirens that blare in the middle of the night to the confusion of the apartment dwellers during Marie NDiaye’s often elusive Self-Portrait in Green we find ‘We don’t know, we’ve forgotten, how to interpret it.’ But still it seems it must point toward something, such as the various women in green that appear throughout this short novella, sometimes a symbol of growth (former best friend turned woman in green that marries her father and is frequently mentioned as expanding in size while her father shrinks), or envy (the woman in green who married a friend’s former lover), or sometimes ‘a kind of green woman I haven’t yet come across,’ where wearing green isn’t a requirement for being a woman in green. An ambiguous autofiction—it is the product of NDiaye being asked to write a memoir—the self-portrait of the title seems to become one less centered on the self and more the self in-relation-to the various women in green that cross her path. Told through scattered diary-esque entries ranging from 2000-2004 and written in a way that captures a surreal unease (beautifully captured by Jordan Stump in a PEN Award-winning translation), Self-Portrait in Green is an elusive and thought provoking little novella.
‘Again the ambiguity, the groping, the unanswered questions about all this green.’
I came to this curious novella by way of Amina Cain discussing the visual quality of the tale, and having read and enjoyed NDiaye’s That Time of Year, I figured she was worth another read. I’m glad I did, and while this book may seem a bit frustrating to some—not unlike That Time of Year the events feel protentous yet obfuscating with something rather off creating a rather unsettling feel—it is one that is best enjoyed by letting it wash over you and feeling companionship with the narrator through your shared uncertainty. A book built on amalgamating details instead of plot, it opens on a scene of impending disaster with a river potentially about to overflow (the river, she observes, is distinctly feminine for this) and this sense of dread is carried through each vignette. Things never quite line up. A friend has a double who acts erratically, a strange object is running amok, a woman standing by a banana tree can’t be observed by the narrators children, or a woman who hangs herself is later witnessed in a grocery store. Everything is on the verge of existence and non-existence and we see how we, too, may be on such a precipice.
‘the belief in the infinity of possibilities, the illusion that you can forever start over again, that every mark made on you lasts a little while then ends up disappearing—all that we no longer have.’
What makes this book so intriguing is the refusal of any concrete center to pin the idea of a woman and green upon. She is instead an shifting symbol seemingly pointing towards a shared idea. She is sometimes an image of brute force, of disdain, and often an idea of for ‘not what was, but what should have been, could have been, had she only made some other choice way back then, and she regrets the choice she made, the path of sorrow.’ She is anywhere and can appear at any time, even after death because ‘how can you even die, simply that, when you live a life of stone, unchanging and immobile?’ Though perhaps the best singular impression of a woman in green is the author’s own mother, despite her not even being in green:
‘My mother is a woman in green, untouchable, disappointing, infinitely mutable, very cold, able, by force of will, to become very beautiful, and able, too, not to want to.’
The idea of giving a name to things, like the concept of a woman in green, seems to express the idea of having a power over something or at least a sense of control. Such as the mysterious dark object running around town that the narrator is asked by her children to say what it is—when she can’t she decides instead she hasn’t seen it.
Self-Portrait in Green is strange, surreal, yet rather gorgeous and NDiaye has an excellent control over language meant to feel like losing control. Perhaps it is the very elusiveness that makes it so meaningful, because what is meaning but something we create as a narrative out of the chaos around us. It is a book that, I suspect, rewards close rereads and individual readers will likely find individual meaning within it. I am enthralled with the uniqueness of NDiaye’s works and how—like a woman in green—they haunt your mind for a long time to come.
3.5/5
April 13, 2025
5 " a sublime and delicate melancholy exploration of self and memory...." stars !!
Tie-5th Favorite Read of 2024 Award
A warm thank you to Spenx who put this book on my radar.
Ms. NDiaye has written two of my most favorite novels:
1. Three Strong Women (My 2016 Silver Award Winner- published in 2012)
2. My Heart Hemmed In (My 2019 Silver Award Winner -published in 2007)
This was first published in 2005 in French...this translation in 2014.
I am feeling overwhelmed with emotion and I cannot put in words how deeply this veiled creative memoir affected me so I composed a small poem to express my admiration and gratitude to the author
Marie dans une robe élégante en soie verte légère
Marie I sit with you in a small park, next to you, beside you
In solidarity I listen to your tales of green
The women, all those women, the ghosts, the goddesses, the ghouls
Green are all of them, hardened, a veneer of green
Underneath is the blue, the crimson, the melancholy, the pain
Gently I take your hand Marie
A small swarm of butterflies tickles our necks and we smile
Tie-5th Favorite Read of 2024 Award
A warm thank you to Spenx who put this book on my radar.
Ms. NDiaye has written two of my most favorite novels:
1. Three Strong Women (My 2016 Silver Award Winner- published in 2012)
2. My Heart Hemmed In (My 2019 Silver Award Winner -published in 2007)
This was first published in 2005 in French...this translation in 2014.
I am feeling overwhelmed with emotion and I cannot put in words how deeply this veiled creative memoir affected me so I composed a small poem to express my admiration and gratitude to the author
Marie dans une robe élégante en soie verte légère
Marie I sit with you in a small park, next to you, beside you
In solidarity I listen to your tales of green
The women, all those women, the ghosts, the goddesses, the ghouls
Green are all of them, hardened, a veneer of green
Underneath is the blue, the crimson, the melancholy, the pain
Gently I take your hand Marie
A small swarm of butterflies tickles our necks and we smile
August 18, 2019
This strange little book won an award for creative non-fiction and is what happened when the author Marie NDiaye was asked for memoir. Between the floodwaters rising and the mysterious women in green, it reads like anything but reality. It was a quicker read I selected for Women in Translation Month. Translated by Jordan Stump, who must have had a puzzle on his hands.
I wonder about women in relation to specific colors. Yellow wallpaper, women in green... I'm guessing this is important. Sometimes I feel like I read but do not understand (but I'm okay feeling that way.)
I know of, but have not read, other books by Ndiaye. Have you? I'm interested to hear if her fiction falls along similar lines.
I wonder about women in relation to specific colors. Yellow wallpaper, women in green... I'm guessing this is important. Sometimes I feel like I read but do not understand (but I'm okay feeling that way.)
I know of, but have not read, other books by Ndiaye. Have you? I'm interested to hear if her fiction falls along similar lines.
February 20, 2021
And for what reason? Is it so that at various moments in my life, I might meet up with a woman in green? Because this is only one of many
Self Portrait in Green, Jordan Stump’s translation of Marie Ndiaye’s 2005 Autoportrait en vert, was originally published by Two Lines Press in the US in 2014, but has now been published in the UK by Influx Press (“an independent publisher based in north London ...committed to publishing innovative and challenging fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction from across the UK and beyond”).
Which made for a great prompt for me to get to this, my 5th novel by the author/translator combination. Links to my reviews (date shown = original French publication date):
Un temps de saison/ That Time of Year (1994): https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Autoportrait en vert/ Self Portrait in Green (2005): see below
Mon cœur a l'etroit / My Heart Hemmed In (2009): https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Ladivine / Ladivine (2013): https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
La Cheffe, roman d'une cuisinière / The Cheffe (2016): https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I say ‘novel’, but in terms of length, Self Portrait in Green is a novella - 79 pages in this edition - and in form it straddles the boundary of fiction and creative non-fiction (the English translation indeed won the 2015 CLMP Firecracker Award for creative nonfiction).
This is a memoir of sorts, told in the form of diary extracts, except one doubly distanced through both the unnamed narrator, and the “women in green” she encounters during the book’s pages, across different years and locations, encounters that are often surreal, and which, as the title of the novel suggest, may actually be manifestations of her own insecurities.
The novel opens and closes with an image of the River Garonne,
December 2003 — Evening has come, and the Garonne is rising hour after hour in the dark.
We all know the river can rise nine meters above its banks before it overflows, thanks to the levees surrounding the village.
That much we know. It’s the first thing you learn when you make up your mind to settle in this place, eternally under threat from the floodwaters of the Garonne. What we don’t know this evening is what’s coming tonight, or tomorrow—if, like last time, ten months ago, the water will stop at the top of the levees, or, as it did twenty-two years ago, spill over, submerge the streets, invade the ground floor of the houses, sometimes the second floor, sometimes the whole house.
…
We wait, we watch. The object of our vigilance is not some Old Man, it’s not le Missisippi, it’s not le Danube or le Rhône; no one here doubts for a moment that La Garonne’s essence is feminine. She’s brown tonight, heavy, almost bulging.
And at the novel’s end the waters have stopped riding but as the narrator surveys the flooded area: is the Garonne .. is the Garonne, a woman in green?
An insightful review - https://readingintranslation.com/2014... - that links to this analysis - http://www.sens-public.org/articles/705/ - of the French original, which assigns it to the genre of self-portraiture (as distinct from autobiography), and which also suggests the original included enigmatic photographs.
An impressive work albeit not one for readers looking for neat resolutions or ready explanations.
Self Portrait in Green, Jordan Stump’s translation of Marie Ndiaye’s 2005 Autoportrait en vert, was originally published by Two Lines Press in the US in 2014, but has now been published in the UK by Influx Press (“an independent publisher based in north London ...committed to publishing innovative and challenging fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction from across the UK and beyond”).
Which made for a great prompt for me to get to this, my 5th novel by the author/translator combination. Links to my reviews (date shown = original French publication date):
Un temps de saison/ That Time of Year (1994): https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Autoportrait en vert/ Self Portrait in Green (2005): see below
Mon cœur a l'etroit / My Heart Hemmed In (2009): https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Ladivine / Ladivine (2013): https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
La Cheffe, roman d'une cuisinière / The Cheffe (2016): https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I say ‘novel’, but in terms of length, Self Portrait in Green is a novella - 79 pages in this edition - and in form it straddles the boundary of fiction and creative non-fiction (the English translation indeed won the 2015 CLMP Firecracker Award for creative nonfiction).
This is a memoir of sorts, told in the form of diary extracts, except one doubly distanced through both the unnamed narrator, and the “women in green” she encounters during the book’s pages, across different years and locations, encounters that are often surreal, and which, as the title of the novel suggest, may actually be manifestations of her own insecurities.
The novel opens and closes with an image of the River Garonne,
December 2003 — Evening has come, and the Garonne is rising hour after hour in the dark.
We all know the river can rise nine meters above its banks before it overflows, thanks to the levees surrounding the village.
That much we know. It’s the first thing you learn when you make up your mind to settle in this place, eternally under threat from the floodwaters of the Garonne. What we don’t know this evening is what’s coming tonight, or tomorrow—if, like last time, ten months ago, the water will stop at the top of the levees, or, as it did twenty-two years ago, spill over, submerge the streets, invade the ground floor of the houses, sometimes the second floor, sometimes the whole house.
…
We wait, we watch. The object of our vigilance is not some Old Man, it’s not le Missisippi, it’s not le Danube or le Rhône; no one here doubts for a moment that La Garonne’s essence is feminine. She’s brown tonight, heavy, almost bulging.
And at the novel’s end the waters have stopped riding but as the narrator surveys the flooded area: is the Garonne .. is the Garonne, a woman in green?
An insightful review - https://readingintranslation.com/2014... - that links to this analysis - http://www.sens-public.org/articles/705/ - of the French original, which assigns it to the genre of self-portraiture (as distinct from autobiography), and which also suggests the original included enigmatic photographs.
An impressive work albeit not one for readers looking for neat resolutions or ready explanations.
November 22, 2025
زنان سبزی که زندگی ما رو احاطه کردند .دوست داشتنی بود .
September 1, 2024
an odd, sometimes confusing book. it is cryptic, uneasy, and often depends on the reader to fill in the blank and read between the lines. self portrait in green follows a nameless narrator and her sightings of women in 'green'.
i want to reread it in a bit because i feel like a lot of the meaning and symbolism flew over my head, but i do strongly believe it could have been better as a longer book.
i want to reread it in a bit because i feel like a lot of the meaning and symbolism flew over my head, but i do strongly believe it could have been better as a longer book.
November 27, 2021
I’m glad I had a gut feeling that I should try more of NDiaye’s work after not particularly enjoying That Time of Year. I’m also glad Jordan Stump’s translation of Self-Portrait in Green was published by Influx Press this year; it had been on my radar for a while, but wasn’t previously available in the UK.
The book is described as a ‘subversion of the memoir’; it follows a narrator as she repeatedly encounters ‘green women’, figures who seem to represent her own fears about what (or who) she might become. There presence is often haunting, sometimes literally, as in the case of one woman who reappears after her suicide. There’s much of the same sort of abstraction that frustrated me in That Time of Year, but here it’s marshalled, made compelling by NDiaye’s tight control of the narrative. Its combination of autobiography, ghost story and hallucinatory prose reminded me of Hell by Kathryn Davis.
TinyLetter | Linktree
The book is described as a ‘subversion of the memoir’; it follows a narrator as she repeatedly encounters ‘green women’, figures who seem to represent her own fears about what (or who) she might become. There presence is often haunting, sometimes literally, as in the case of one woman who reappears after her suicide. There’s much of the same sort of abstraction that frustrated me in That Time of Year, but here it’s marshalled, made compelling by NDiaye’s tight control of the narrative. Its combination of autobiography, ghost story and hallucinatory prose reminded me of Hell by Kathryn Davis.
TinyLetter | Linktree
September 15, 2022
I have no idea what's going on lol
February 4, 2025
This is tremendous — like the other Ndiaye I’ve read (That Time of Year, also from Two Lines, also translated by Jordan Stump), it has an unreality to it even as it feels to be taking place in a recognizable world. Ndiaye finds a strangeness in life and communicates her sense of it to the reader. She reminds me of Robert Aickman in her disinclination to explain herself or her stories; she lets the story happen, and if some children should happen to be gathered in a circle around some unidentified black animal, well, then that’s what there is to know about that. This is identified as a memoir, but you won’t read a memoir like it elsewhere — it consists of stories from the life of its narrator that, over a span of a few years during which a river overflows, encompass various members of her family. It’s odd in all the best ways; it feels like a ghost story. Highest recommendation.
May 12, 2016
An astonishing, strange work. Our narrator encounters numerous 'green women.' "Who can deny that cruelty is particularly given to draping itself in all sorts of greens?" The green women are ontologically indeterminate; perhaps they're projections, perhaps they're supernatural creatures, perhaps they're ordinary women who happen to be wearing green. Their identity is indeterminate: are they body-snatchers, or are they who they claim to be (the narrator's friend, or mother, and so on), or are they actually the narrator herself?
So far so interesting, but Self-Portrait sets itself apart by its darkness. What could have become an easily affirmative "we're all women in this together" tale instead offers us, as in the quote above, cruelty, terror, fear, guilt, and discomfort. Whatever the problem is, you won't find it outside of you unless you also find it inside of you.
So far so interesting, but Self-Portrait sets itself apart by its darkness. What could have become an easily affirmative "we're all women in this together" tale instead offers us, as in the quote above, cruelty, terror, fear, guilt, and discomfort. Whatever the problem is, you won't find it outside of you unless you also find it inside of you.
October 9, 2022
A memoir that poses many questions yet offers very few answers.
A nameless narrator becomes obsessed by her sightings of an unknown woman in green.
This is a remarkably unique, short novel, of which I am still none the wiser of its true meaning. Nonetheless I still feel an understanding, I resonate with it, and feel an indescribable connection to its unnamed narrator - possibly towards it's ambiguity in capturing the complexities of life, the turbulence of relationships, the moments in which we lose ourselves and when patience and tolerance wears thin.
A nameless narrator becomes obsessed by her sightings of an unknown woman in green.
This is a remarkably unique, short novel, of which I am still none the wiser of its true meaning. Nonetheless I still feel an understanding, I resonate with it, and feel an indescribable connection to its unnamed narrator - possibly towards it's ambiguity in capturing the complexities of life, the turbulence of relationships, the moments in which we lose ourselves and when patience and tolerance wears thin.
March 30, 2020
“What we don’t know this evening is what’s coming tonight, or tomorrow—"
From SELF-PORTRAIT IN GREEN by Marie NDiaye, translated from the French (France) by Jordan Stump, 2005 in French / 2014 in English by @two_lines_press
An unnamed narrator describes a flood in her small French town, and her encounters with "green women" - sometimes clothed in green, sometimes with emerald eyes, some that stand ominously in green grass fields. Are they spectres? Latent memories? Hallucinations? Some are family members, friends...They occupy this liminal space between dead and alive, both known and unknown. There is an eerie intimacy with these "beings" in each vignette, and a natural questioning of our unnamed narrator and what she describes. Sensual and erotic details of colors and shapes, of bodies and forms.
Best not to ask "why?" or "what's happening?" with this small work - just immerse in NDiaye's mesmerizing words and Stump's lush translation. It's beautifully disorienting and utterly odd, and I wanted more. Thankfully NDiaye has several works available in English translation to explore.
"It's true that green can't possibly be the sole color of cruelty... But who can deny that cruelty is particularly given to draping itself in all sorts of greens?"
From SELF-PORTRAIT IN GREEN by Marie NDiaye, translated from the French (France) by Jordan Stump, 2005 in French / 2014 in English by @two_lines_press
An unnamed narrator describes a flood in her small French town, and her encounters with "green women" - sometimes clothed in green, sometimes with emerald eyes, some that stand ominously in green grass fields. Are they spectres? Latent memories? Hallucinations? Some are family members, friends...They occupy this liminal space between dead and alive, both known and unknown. There is an eerie intimacy with these "beings" in each vignette, and a natural questioning of our unnamed narrator and what she describes. Sensual and erotic details of colors and shapes, of bodies and forms.
Best not to ask "why?" or "what's happening?" with this small work - just immerse in NDiaye's mesmerizing words and Stump's lush translation. It's beautifully disorienting and utterly odd, and I wanted more. Thankfully NDiaye has several works available in English translation to explore.
"It's true that green can't possibly be the sole color of cruelty... But who can deny that cruelty is particularly given to draping itself in all sorts of greens?"
September 28, 2022
I am really unsure how to rate this, but I guess it would fall somewhere between a 3 and 4.
Very unique and, even though it is pretty short, takes some adjusting to really get into it.
I love cryptic and absence-filled writing and writers who trust their readers - that said, I don't think the execution was perfect here. The date entries were confusing, and to me quite unnecessary, if I am honest. I like choice of using green to "tag" the subjects, who represent her projections of self and with whom she creates deep identification (psychoanalytically speaking), .
Interestingly enough, I just read a book (White on white) surrounding similar themes (others as mirrored surfaces to reflect one's self), where the concept was much better explored.
Very unique and, even though it is pretty short, takes some adjusting to really get into it.
I love cryptic and absence-filled writing and writers who trust their readers - that said, I don't think the execution was perfect here. The date entries were confusing, and to me quite unnecessary, if I am honest. I like choice of using green to "tag" the subjects, who represent her projections of self and with whom she creates deep identification (psychoanalytically speaking), .
Interestingly enough, I just read a book (White on white) surrounding similar themes (others as mirrored surfaces to reflect one's self), where the concept was much better explored.
December 27, 2020
Creative, but really- I didn't like it much. For one, I hardly understood it. I mean I get that there are many layers and meanings and what not but I just felt like this was trying too hard. If that's a thing at all. One saving grace is that the narration is lovely, but otherwise it simply did not resonate with me.
May 4, 2023
J'ai rien compris mais j'ai beaucoup aimé
Un récit fait de portraits de femmes, réelles ou imaginaires, intimes ou croisées. Chaque visage est l'objet d'un conte d'une inquiétante étrangeté, expression de ce sentiment innommé qu'elles inspirent à NDiaye. Les femmes en vert sont-elles craintes ? Aimées ? Font-elles l'objet de sa pitié ? Sont-elles des reflets de ses propres démons ?
Un récit fait de portraits de femmes, réelles ou imaginaires, intimes ou croisées. Chaque visage est l'objet d'un conte d'une inquiétante étrangeté, expression de ce sentiment innommé qu'elles inspirent à NDiaye. Les femmes en vert sont-elles craintes ? Aimées ? Font-elles l'objet de sa pitié ? Sont-elles des reflets de ses propres démons ?
March 10, 2024
marie ndiaye once again proves herself as a master in creating a sense of unease. this short “memoir” tells of her encounters with various different women who are all dressed in green and are representative of the author’s fears about who she might turn into one day. while this narrative wasn’t as satisfying for me as my heart hemmed in (i think this one suffered from being just a bit too short. the idea of the women in green being projections of the author’s fears about herself didn’t fully click for me until i read some other reviews and i would’ve loved for her to dig a bit deeper), i absolutely loved ndiaye’s writing style and the imagery she was able to evoke with her words. this one definitely shone for me with the language more than the ideas presented, but it’s short enough that i can easily reread it to see if i glean anything more from it. i thought this edition’s inclusion of photographs was wonderful and wish i could’ve seen them in a print copy instead of on my e-reader’s screen. ndiaye is absolutely an author i will continue to read from, i think she’s incredibly underrated even though this one wasn’t a new favorite.
February 18, 2025
Every time I read one of these french novella-adjacent books I sit here wondering, should I be doing something I actually enjoy instead? I think I'm going to take my own advice and stop trying to find these books profound.
May 29, 2023
Womanhood and maternity 🤨
February 27, 2026
Video review to follow
October 1, 2021
I enjoyed this book; it offered up so many interesting ideas and explored this image of the woman in green which can't really be pinned down to mean one thing (at least as I read it). However, there are some descriptions of weight gain and weight loss that I found a little insensitive at times, particularly the one line 'You can't go on loving someone who won't eat', in the context where someone is freeing themselves of a metaphorical cage they are trapped in. I can perhaps understand why the author chose to write this considering the characters it involved, but the line itself is unnecessary and far too general to be appropriate in my opinion.
May 13, 2021
Asked to write a memoir, Marie Ndiaye presents this strange little offering instead, excellently translated by Jordan Stump. It follows a nameless narrator obsessed by her sightings of an unknown woman in green. The woman sometimes feels like it may be our narrator, other times other women in her life or perhaps ghosts of women past. Seductive and elusive, Marie Ndiaye takes us on a journey where we are never quite sure of what's happening, but we are still in for the ride. I enjoyed it a lot. With many references to green, this tongue in cheek self-aware comment from the narrator, which pokes fun at the reader, also seems to characterise the levity with which the author takes her work, or herself and perhaps the genre itself. "The fact is, I found nothing at all amusing about it. I told myself: here we go again. Again the ambiguity, the groping, the unanswered questions about all this green."
August 29, 2023
What a strange, challenging, and beautifully written and translated work from Marie NDiaye (translated from French by Jordan Stump). I loved her novel That Time of Year put out by Two Lines Press a few years ago, and this dreamy "sort-of-memoir" has the same unsettling feel to it.
February 7, 2015
I just can't get over how good Marie NDiaye is. Her prose are so beautiful, I can't put her books down once I start reading. She is a truly gifted writer.
May 23, 2025
fascinating concept, puzzling out what a green woman is and her proximity to femininity, her relation to the river, and how motherhood plays a role in all of this: "The object of our vigilance is not some Old Man, it's not le Mississippi, it's not le Danube or le Rhone; no one here doubts for a moment that la Garonne's essence is feminine. She's brown tonight, heavy, almost bulging."
the second half of the book becomes a more cohesive narrative of the narrator's family, but i preferred the first half and its strangeness, where there's a hint of the supernatural. this is especially so for the section about jenny, ivan, and ivan's wife. i think the concept/metaphor of green women works best here, especially wrt a green woman's liminality which is sort of dropped in the second half.
interesting book, great writing, but didn't necessarily grab me; bonus points though for the absolute jumpscare it gave me when i flipped to the author profile and I had just read someone talking about this exact profile, namely it's first line being "NDiaye met her father for the first time at age fifteen, two years before publishing her first novel" -- I think it was Lafarge in Lovebug talking about it? But I don't think she actually named the author's name so how weirddddd that almost the next book I read it's THAT author blurb.
the second half of the book becomes a more cohesive narrative of the narrator's family, but i preferred the first half and its strangeness, where there's a hint of the supernatural. this is especially so for the section about jenny, ivan, and ivan's wife. i think the concept/metaphor of green women works best here, especially wrt a green woman's liminality which is sort of dropped in the second half.
interesting book, great writing, but didn't necessarily grab me; bonus points though for the absolute jumpscare it gave me when i flipped to the author profile and I had just read someone talking about this exact profile, namely it's first line being "NDiaye met her father for the first time at age fifteen, two years before publishing her first novel" -- I think it was Lafarge in Lovebug talking about it? But I don't think she actually named the author's name so how weirddddd that almost the next book I read it's THAT author blurb.
June 26, 2022
“Who can deny that cruelty is particularly given to draping itself in all sorts of greens.”
This is one of those books where I’m not exactly sure what it all meant, but it was an enjoyable read nonetheless. The idea of these “women in green” was hard to fully grasp but oddly unsettling.
I love reading these little, strange, under 100 page stories.
This is one of those books where I’m not exactly sure what it all meant, but it was an enjoyable read nonetheless. The idea of these “women in green” was hard to fully grasp but oddly unsettling.
I love reading these little, strange, under 100 page stories.
January 29, 2023
maybe weirdest and cleanest book i’ve read in awhile (ever?). i think by clean i mean…….. wrapped around in string……. taken aback, a little scared, made me miss my parents in a weird way. also, i think writing reviews on letterboxed has unleashed something in me, might write more reviews here too from now on
July 4, 2015
Good, meditative, evocative work here.
April 21, 2024
Chilled me to the bone. My first by her- genuinely unnerving but totally compelling.
May 7, 2018
I'm not sure I understood this profoundly strange little book. Billed as a memoir, it reads like magical realism, full of ghosts, strange dark monsters, and the dead returning to life. I only understood from the blurb that the many women in green the narrator meets are supposed to be aspects of herself: I took them as they appeared: strange, dangerous women that frighten and haunt the narrator. Aside from the confusion, I struggled with this book because it often felt more like elliptical notes than a complete narrative. The author's emotions about her peculiar, estranged parents, or her sister or children are unformed, and the stories about them, presented without context, feel vague. Yet as I was reading I was gripped by this book, and I'm curious about NDiaye's other work. She is certainly an original writer, and that's a rare thing.
January 25, 2024
“it’s nothing more than life at its most ordinary- why is this all so sad?”
a curious, surreal-at-times, unsettling-at-times vignette of life unfolding (and often nearly unfolded). an untangling of ‘women in green,’ which never being clearly defined (sometimes jealousy, sometimes pity, sometimes a vague mix of emotions) reveals the authors own musings and fears about purpose and identity. (i think lol)
also… i am just obsessed with how marie ndiaye strings words together; “…and now she’s discovering an incomprehensible paralysis of the sentiments, a collective indifference and sabotage: the slow agony of a household revolving around a master who taste for death is no longer kept under wraps.” i want to read a million more sentences like this please.
a curious, surreal-at-times, unsettling-at-times vignette of life unfolding (and often nearly unfolded). an untangling of ‘women in green,’ which never being clearly defined (sometimes jealousy, sometimes pity, sometimes a vague mix of emotions) reveals the authors own musings and fears about purpose and identity. (i think lol)
also… i am just obsessed with how marie ndiaye strings words together; “…and now she’s discovering an incomprehensible paralysis of the sentiments, a collective indifference and sabotage: the slow agony of a household revolving around a master who taste for death is no longer kept under wraps.” i want to read a million more sentences like this please.
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