A Sentimental Novel

by Alain Robbe-Grillet

In France, Alain Robbe-Grillet's final novel was sold in shrink-wrap, labeled with a sticker warning readers that this perverse fairy tale might offend certain sensibilities.

It tells the story of Gigi, also known as Djinn, who is being schooled by her father to be a perfect slave and mistress.

Running the gamut of unacceptable subject matter from incest to torture, this book abounds with vignettes that explore taboos and their representation in fiction, from the Brothers Grimm to the Marquis de Sade.

It is titillating and disgusting, the work of a
dirty old man or brilliant agent provocateur -- or both.

(from Netgalley)

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Erotica, Novels, Literature, Unfinished, Dark

150 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Screenplays and novels, such as The Erasers (1953), of French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet, affiliated with the New Wave movement in cinema, subordinate plot to the treatment of space and time; directors, such as Jean Luc Godard and François Truffaut, led this movement, which in the 1960s abandoned traditional narrative techniques in favor of greater use of symbolism and abstraction and dealt with themes of social alienation, psychopathology, and sexual love.

Alain Robbe-Grillet was a French writer and filmmaker. He was along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon one of the figures most associated with the trend of the Nouveau Roman. Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat #32.

He was married to Catherine Robbe-Grillet (née Rstakian) .

Alain Robbe-Grillet was born in Brest (Finistère, France) into a family of engineers and scientists. He was trained as an agricultural engineer. In the years 1943-44 Robbe-Grillet participated in service du travail obligatoire in Nuremberg where he worked as a machinist. The initial few months were seen by Robbe-Grillet as something of a holiday, since in between the very rudimentary training he was given to operate the machinery he had free time to go to the theatre and the opera. In 1945, Robbe-Grillet completed his diploma at the National Institute of Agronomy. Later, his work as an agronomist took him to Martinique, French Guinea,Guadeloupe and Morocco.

His first novel The Erasers (Les Gommes) was published in 1953, after which he dedicated himself full-time to his new occupation. His early work was praised by eminent critics such as Roland Barthes and Maurice Blanchot. Around the time of his second novel he became a literary advisor for Les Editions de Minuit and occupied this position from 1955 until 1985. After publishing four novels, in 1961 he worked with Alain Renais, writing the script for Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année Dernière à Marienbad), and subsequently wrote and directed his own films. In 1963, Robbe-Grillet published For a New Novel (Pour un Nouveau Roman), a collection of previous published theoretical writings concerning the novel. From 1966 to 1968 he was a member of the High Committee for the Defense and Expansion of French (Haut comité pour la défense et l´expansion de la langue française). In addition Robbe-Grillet also led the Centre for Sociology of Literature (Centre de sociologie de la littérature) at the university of Bruxelles from 1980 to 1988. From 1971 to 1995 Robbe-Grillet was a professor at New York University, lecturing on his own novels.

In 2004 Robbe-Grillet was elected to the Académie française, but was never actually formally received by the Académie because of disputes regarding the Académie's reception procedures. Robbe-Grillet both refused to prepare and submit a welcome speech in advance, preferring to improvise his speech, as well as refusing to purchase and wear the Académie's famous green tails (habit vert) and sabre, which he considered as out-dated.

He died in Caen after succumbing to heart problems

Style

His writing style has been described as "realist" or "phenomenological" (in the Heideggerian sense) or "a theory of pure surface." Methodical, geometric, and often repetitive descriptions of objects replace the psychology and interiority of the character. Instead, one slowly pieces together the story and the emotional experience of jealousy in the repetition of descriptions, the attention to odd details, and the breaks in repetitions. Ironically, this method resembles the experience of psychoanalysis in which the deeper unconscious meanings are contained in the flow and disruptions of free associations. Timelines and plots are fractured and the resulting novel resembles the literary

Reviews

[JaHy☝Hold the Fairy Dust]

DNF - No way....No how.. No amount money would make me finish ... Only Tom Hardy in the flesh could persuade me to change my mind..... Maybe :-D

Jeepers creepers you twisted schmuck - ( I'm trying to be respectful of the dead.. I really want to drop the first 4 letters and an F)

Okay, I'm not going to lie, I knew from the beginning this book was inspired by the authors own sexual fantasies. Call me PERVY but that little tidbit was what sucked me in. What spit me the hell out was "SAID FUCKING SEXUAL FANTASIES!!!!!!'"


From page 1 this book was a challenge. My copy had numerous words missing letters, so not only was I trying to grasp what the hell was going on, I was also working on figuring out what the fuck was being written.. It was actually sort of fun in the beginning, but as the book became more and more disturbing, my brain wanted to run the hell away, which meant words weren't coming together as quickly..


Did I listen? NOPE! Fairly quickly incest reared its awkward head, as did the fluttering butterflies in my stomach... But I told myself', "Stop being a judgmental twit. We can do this" ....FUCK me and my perverted mind, will I ever learn ?


Yeah, in the span of 20 pages , my stomach went from a few butterflies to roller coaster drop to pedophilia torture hell..


How? Its a little scary in here --->
*A statue of the Virgin Mary was being shoved up his daughters vaj by one of the 3 Doctors who were handling her similar to how one handles raw ground beef.

* Then a painting,that is supposedly on display at the Vatican museum is drawn out for us. Its an image of a girl child of twelve with a nicely rounded bottom , kneeling before a seated male who holds her head in both hands so that she can keep his cock deep in her mouth during ejaculation, while another man is shoving a white poker up her ass.

* There's another picture of a woman being sodomized by an enormous dildo while a second man slices off the tips of the woman's breast.

* There's a scene where a woman is pulled apart so violently her uterus falls out.

* Double-bladed hunting knives, phalluses trimmed with spikes, sharp long-toothed saws, red hot pincers, pokers, picks, and just about every shape and size dildo are shoved up women's vagina. You name it, it's up there.

* Torture, Torture and more torture...Don't worry, I'll spare you all the torturous details.


Finally, my "I QUIT" meter started buzzing when the main characters 12 .YEAR.OLD. FIANCÉE'S, SEX, DRUGS AND RAPE THAT HOE Birthday Party started popping. His fiancées a cunt!... Sorry but its true.. The things she enjoyed doing to the older girls was repulsive. My mind was screaming "HELLO, THIS IS THE AUTHORS SEXUAL FANTASIES. PUT THE BOOK DOWN AND GO DIRECTLY TO CONFESSION,YOU STUPID TWIT!" .. Did I listen? NOOOOO!!!! I read for a few more pages and once his daughter pissed into another girls mouth, THAT's when I had enough.
...Go figure.

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[Roger Brunyate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Way Beyond de Sade

I ordered this book as a challenge, a challenge I am totally unable to fulfill. Like many other college students of my generation, I revered Robbe-Grillet for the enigmatic precision of his script for Alain Resnais' 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad, a mysterious sexual dance played out with the formal elegance of a chess game on an iceberg. Inspired by this, my friends and I read several novels in the nouveau roman style that he virtually invented: books by him, Nathalie Sarraute, and others. I soon grew tired of such extreme abstraction, but Robbe-Grillet's name has remained in my mind almost synonymous with the French avant-garde. So, when I read that his last novella, rejected by his American publishers in 2007 on grounds of obscenity, had finally found a translator and publisher, I was eager to read it. I would find out what the fuss was about, and mount a defense on the basis of some literary or philosophical goal that would transcend pornography. Now having taken as much of it as I can stomach, I have to admit failure. I see no defense.

But it is not pornography either. Pornography is surely meant to titillate, to indulge sexual fantasies, but this goes so far beyond the realm of fantasy as to emerge the other side into a realm of excess so total that I do not even have a name for it. It starts gently enough. The writer, waking in a bed in a sterile room, has a vision of a lightly clad pubescent girl by a fountain. Called in to a library, she must read libertine literature to an older man, perhaps her father, who canes her naked buttocks if she slips up. After this, she serves him food and drink, then comes to his bed. It becomes hard to tell what is dream, what fantasy, what read from a book. Soon flagellation and incest are the least of it as the number of very young girls multiplies, the tortures get more sexual and elaborate, and an increasing number end in dismemberment and death. Any titillation I myself might have felt was gone by 20 or so of the numbered paragraphs. It is simply impossible to imagine anyone making his way through to paragraph 239 without switching off completely. Could it be that the emetic effect of such overdose was precisely the point?

The French have long had a fascination with literary sadism, especially among intellectual authors. For example, take the very similar Story of the Eye, the 1928 novella by no less than Georges Battaille, the Surrealist and major philosopher. For a long time, "Pauline Réage," the pseudonymous author of Story of O, was suspected of being a member of the Académie Française, perhaps Henri de Montherlant or André Malraux. Robbe-Grillet's book, like de Sade's own and most of their successors, is characterized by a cool refinement at odds with its subject-matter. These horrors do not take place in suburban basements, but in country mansions, private libraries, chateaux whose torture chambers have historical precedents and Latin names. They presuppose an international trade among connoisseurs for condemned criminals (young and female, naturally), vagrant girls, and even unwanted daughters. Everything is described in much the way you would discuss the exotic foods at an ultra-exclusive restaurant.

"The close-up descriptions of the machinery of torture, [...] all in polished, almost scientific language, with no hint of a moral dimension, produce an unholy kind of terror and pity and firmly relegate these scenes to the realm of the unreal from which they came," says the translator D. E. Brooke. I have to say I experienced neither the terror nor the pity, and the unreality did not make the result more palatable. "Such a transformation of haunting horrors into a work of literature is an act of existential alchemy," Brooke concludes. I cannot see it; my one-star rating is a fair description of my feelings. Yet, though I shall probably never open it again, I shall keep this book on my shelves in sheer amazement at its existence.

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Sentimental Novel was never destined to be a triumphant swan song. Its deceivingly-banal, ironically-neutral title (recalling A Serbian Film or Throbbing Gristle's 20 Jazz Funk Greats) is neither suggestive of its contents nor of closure. No, this is the enfant terrible ending his career at his most divisive and controversial.

Denied publication from all U.S. presses sans the ever-reliable Dalkey Archive, A Sentimental Novel is likely to engender the same simultaneous reactions of disgust and awe as Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, Mirbeau’s The Torture Garden, Bataille's Story of the Eye, or Guyotat's Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers. Indeed, centering the work within the aesthetic legacy of transgression endemic in avant-garde French art (not least of all the oeuvre of Robbe-Grillet himself, both in film and literature) is crucial for leveling against the widespread—and misleading—criticism that this is merely a work of pornography, a collection of private sexual fantasies. An inspection of the novel’s formal structure reveals quite the opposite: it is in fact the anti-pornography par excellence, a hermetic enclosure forestalling any prospects of titillation.

It opens in a Beckettian non-space, a void occupied by a nameless, disembodied narrator whose existence knows no past, present, or future:

"At first sight, the place in which I find myself is neutral, white, so to speak; not dazzlingly white, rather of a non-descript hue, deceptive, ephemeral, altogether absent.

...

The only problem, on reflection, is of a different order altogether: I don't know what I'm doing here, nor why I've come, with what conscious or impulsive intention, that is, if one can even speak of there having been an intention at some point.”

The narrator is then drawn to a corralled tableau vivant adorning the cell, depicting an idyllic scene of a nubile swimmer. Within this internal scaffolding, the novel descends into 120-odd pages of increasingly grotesque sexual escapades broken into miniature sections: a Locus Solus-esque tour of vignettes impregnated with Sadism.

This brief, understated opening is crucial for an understanding of the novel. As a framing (both in the literal and figurative sense), it implicitly renders the rest of the work an aesthetic object for the unnamed narrator, embedded within their ever-present gaze. In this regard, the sexual chronicles of the novel are posed as a voyeuristic model of Robbe-Grillet’s libidinal unconscious: we, the readers, are thus planted on the same plane as the narrator, passive spectators to the onslaught of depravity.

Though explicit, the vignettes never border on erotic. Due to the aforementioned distancing of reader from content, one is always held at bay from participating in the work's sexual economy. The prose too elicits estrangement: clinical, sterile, objective, it is fundamentally at odds with what it purports to describe. It is, in fact, the very uncoupling of Eros from eroticism.

Such a hermetic architecture raises the question of what critique is suitable for A Sentimental Novel: can one condemn its wandering, non-convergent sexual narrative as writerly excess, when it is subordinate to an aesthetic framing? The novel is constructed to be unreadable, its author’s sexual privations sealed off from our scrutiny. It is a work that defies criticism and resists readership.

Note: Taking into account the above, my 2-star rating of the book is a reflection of my personal affinity thereof rather than a critical mark.

[Silvana]

DNF!! I came across Jahy reading this and I thought, hmmm interesting!

I started and I was instantly shocked







I just couldn't go on, too disturbing, disgusting and violent! Sorry book!



Yeah I don't recommend!

[[P]]

Since becoming aware of its existence I had earmarked Alain Robbe-Grillet’s A Sentimental Novel to be the last book I wrote about, and perhaps the last book I read. It seemed to me to be the perfect way to go out, to give up the activities that I so often find joyless and detrimental to my mental health. As is typical, I did not want to take my leave gracefully, but, rather, with a big fuck you to books, to writing, and to my old self. Indeed, that is how I understood the purpose of A Sentimental Novel, prior to reading it. It was written when Robbe-Grillet was in his eighties, and was published, in 2007, a year before his death. It was, therefore, the work of a man who must have known he was reaching the end of his life. This, he may very well have decided, would be his concluding statement, his last word to the world; and, as such, I saw in its promised unpleasantness, and disregard for the well-being of its reader, a stiff middle finger.

But I was wrong.

A Sentimental Novel centres on the relationship between a fifteen year old, ‘barely pubescent’ girl and a man who is said to be her father. In the early stages – even taking into account the suggested incest and the underage sex – what it serves up is a fairly tame and predictable account of sadomasochism. The ‘authoritarian’ master and the ‘docile’ pupil engage in a training regime, involving corporal punishment [whipping her backside – for wrongdoings or simply when he feels like it], enforced reading of pornographic material, serving him drinks, etc. She is the ‘lovely schoolgirl’, the ‘underage courtesan’, and he is her ‘inflexible director of conscience and libido.’ It is, let’s be honest, the sort of role-play consenting adults take part in every day, for their mutual enjoyment. In doing so, they are not, at least in most cases, condoning paedophilia, and nor does pornography that depicts similar situations and scenarios. It is simply the case that one of the functions of erotica is to flesh out, give voice to, fantasies many people feel uncomfortable about giving voice to themselves.

Moreover, there are numerous, not-so-subtle, hints that what one is reading is not really happening. It is easy to forget, as the atrocities pile up, that the story is actually being narrated by a man, a man who, on the first page, wakes to find himself in a white room. He does not know how he got there, and wonders whether he was ‘perhaps driven here by force, against my will, in spite of myself even.’ He also wonders whether he is in prison, or whether he is dead. Therefore, the action of the novel, the extreme unpleasantness contained within it, may be, or most likely is, a figment of his imagination. Certainly, it is not possible that the girl and her father are in the room with him, nor that he can see them through a window or door, as he claims there are none. Indeed, the girl, and by extension the story, appears to emerge from a painting that the man is looking at. It is also worth noting that one of the girl’s names is Djinn, which means genie, suggesting, again, that this is all fantasy.

In any case, I do not believe that the exploring of forbidden, if common, fantasies, nor the sexual gratification of his readers, was Robbe-Grillet’s aim. In fact, far from being a dirty and immoral book, I would argue that one of its principle themes is indoctrination and the harmful effects of what people are exposed to, including pornography. The young girl – who, as noted, has several names, but is mostly called Gigi – is groomed to be her father’s sex slave, is made a willing participant, by virtue of a systematic normalising of the behaviour and acts that please him. She lives, for example, in a house that is essentially a brothel, one that is equipped with torture chambers. She knows no other world. There are, moreover, pictures on the walls showing young girls being tortured; and, as previously noted, she is made to read from texts featuring abuse and torture, and listen to her father’s own anecdotes on the subject. She is even given alcohol and drugs in order to make her pliable.

As a consequence of her training, Gigi is the only character in the book who goes on a kind of journey, who evolves, only it is not for the better, it is not towards enlightenment. There is, for her, a pivotal moment in the text when a doll, by which we mean another young girl who has been trained to be submissive, is brought into the house. Some of the abuses Odile has been subjected to are recounted, and Gigi is said to understand that she must ‘not show the tenderness she feels’ for her. She has learnt, therefore, that sympathy or compassion, for example, is unacceptable, and is also aware of her own precarious position in the house i.e. that it is possible that if she displeases her master she may actually find herself in Odile’s position, or worse. Yet, this is the last vestige of humanity one glimpses in her. Once Odile is given to her as a present, Gigi becomes increasingly her father’s daughter.

There is so much in this that one could discuss, not least the idea, which I have expressed myself on numerous occasions, that if you give someone complete freedom over another to do as they please they will invariably do something harmful. However, in terms of this review, what I am most interested in is Gigi’s transformation from slave to master by way of her education. The most persuasive evidence of this is that upon discovery of the pictures of her mother being tortured, Gigi fantasises about Odile being strung up in the same way. She is not pretending out of fear, she has come to find sexual enjoyment in the pain and suffering of others through relentless exposure to it. There are, of course, those who claim that we do not learn in this way, that, to use an analogy, violent computer games cannot create violent people, but I disagree. I do not believe that exposure to unpleasant things has the same effect upon everyone, but I do think that human beings are incredibly suggestible, and our preferences, especially our sexual preferences, are fluid and malleable and are often directly related to our experiences, especially those early in life.

It is significant that there is not a single act of aggression or abuse perpetrated against a male in the novel, significant because this too is, for me, one of Robbe-Grillet’s principle preoccupations. Throughout, he repeatedly highlights the cultural and historical persecution and torture of women. He references the martyrdom of Sankt Giesela, the ‘sacrifices listed in the works of Apuleius, Tertullian, and Juvenal’, the rape and murder of women in religious paintings, the burning and disfigurement of concubines who displeased the emperor of the Tang dynasty with their ‘nocturnal activities’, etc. He also notes that girls from the Middle East and Eastern Europe, amongst other places, who have escaped ill-treatment in their home countries, often find themselves sold into sex slavery. Indeed, Robbe-Grillet himself points out that sinners made to perish in front of witnesses are very seldom men, and are most often girls, not mature women. This he puts down to being a consequence of the power being held by men, of, therefore, patriarchy.

None of that is particularly profound, or insightful, but it is certainly at odds with the common perception of A Sentimental Novel as the outpourings of a dirty old modernist. As with Octave Mirbeau’s The Torture Garden, Robbe-Grillet appears to be making a comment about humanity-at-large, and our well-documented, natural but lamentable, sadistic and masochistic impulses, impulses that, at least in the case of sadism, we go to great lengths these days to hide. However, I cannot conclude this review without reiterating just how disturbing some of the content of the book is, regardless of, in my opinion, the author’s philosophically and morally sound intentions. There is no getting away from the fact that a large part of it is fucking horrible, near unreadable. In fact, I didn’t finish it. I reached breaking point at page eighty-eight, which describes a mother and her baby being raped and dismembered and eaten. So, while A Sentimental Novel is not pornography, and it is not a final fuck you, you might say that it is a test of one’s nerve. How far can you get? How many pages can you stomach?

[Airam Avitok · Rating 5 out of 5]

I honestly liked it. Not because i am a psycho or whatever but because through its "non real" warning, it actually shows a reality. You people think that these things couldnt possible be real? Or hadnt been real? There are so many places in the world that women are oppressed and used as sexual tools. Their lives dont matter at all and men have the upper hand. Yes this world written in the book exists. Maybe not exactly like that, maybe EXACTLY like that or even worse. We will never know. And our "logic" make us see it as it is shown to be' a fantastic sadistic world. But i personally doupt its that simple. For these reasons, from my perspective its a great book, since it does show reality in its cruelest form.

[Kamakana · Rating 4 out of 5]

if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

240219: some kind of genius. not mine. basic reading response (even) after some litcrit on r-g: there is the idea that all works of art are narratives, that is involves humans, either as subject, action, tableau, even landscape. for it is only humans who think in terms of purposeless observation, aesthetic contemplation, rather than immediate engagement with aspects of their world. as animals must respond to their environment. i suggest that even the most abstract work of art, visual, plastic, music, poetry, film and of course here, writing, involves humans. after all humans come to any art images with implicit faith it 'means' something, that words, characters, actions, world presented are all to some purpose. relevance here: this work, these images, are another example of r-g's contention that it is not what the writer ‘says’, for he has nothing to ‘say’, but how he ‘says’ it...

and how does he say it? in translation very well. poetic, effective, detailed, repetitive, sensual. plotless vignettes with archetypical blonde girl images, not 'characters', at play in fictional world of 'adult fairytale', wherever that is, probably in bdsm romance/sex/fantasies. i have not read/seen/looked at much, so i might miss something. actions depicted are vicious, cruel, insane, violent etc. sexualized violence is normal interaction, in historical fantasies, bdsm, Sade, etc. or even self-references to r-g. only ever from dom male to sub girl(s) or dom/sub girl to sub girls. is torturing, torturing in some sex way if possible, many, many, countless young girl(s) image(s) in any way excused/justified by their (described) continuous ecstatic pleasure? if the girl(s) image(s) have great desired orgasms often enough? this is not book for the easily offended. this may not be a book for anyone...

and does how he says it reflect why he says it? why he uses provoking, disturbing, violent, sex etc. images to say nothing? blurb calls this an 'adult' fairytale, which seems to primarily mean it has lots of sex, as in 'adult' film, art, books. this does not much mean 'adult' to me. in fact, thinking in terms of 'fairytales' recalls what little i remember of propp, bettelheim. and of course disney. this is sort of the opposite of sanitizing and rendering family-friendly tales where conniving evil step-sisters mutilate/crush/amputate parts of their own feet so they can fit in that damn glass slipper... r-g amplifies these tales by adding images of what is most fascinating to adults, sex, and combining it with what is (often? always?) most fascinating to children, violence. so maybe r-g is going somewhere. i do not follow. i prefer angela carter for adult fairytales...

more:

by-

Jealousy & In the Labyrinth
The Erasers
Last Year at Marienbad
Voyeur
La Maison de rendez-vous
Project for a Revolution in New York
La Belle Captive
Topology of a Phantom City
Recollections of the Golden Triangle
Djinn
Repetition
A Regicide
A Sentimental Novel

francaise-
La Jalousie
Dans le labyrinthe
Les Gommes
L'année dernière à Marienbad
Instantanés

on-
For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction
Generative Literature and Generative Art: New Essays
Alain Robbe-Grillet: The Body of the Text
The Erotic Dream Machine: Interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet on His Films
Inventing The Real World: The Art of Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet

[Tosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very dirty book. Every page there are episodes of torture, all sorts of sex, and all with underage girls. Alain Robbe-Grillet's last novel is obviously not meant to go gently into the night and wave bye-bye. First of all I want to give Dalkey Archive a slap in the back (not bottom) for publishing this work, because it seems that almost every American publisher has turned down this book, and thinking of it objectively, I totally understand their concerns. On the other hand, Robbe-Grillet is without a doubt one of the most important writers to come out of the late 20th century France. I can't say I like the book, or even enjoyed reading it, but what's interesting to me is how far does he want to take this book. Also since it was his last book, should we consider that fact in its writing? Is this the final message he just wanted to convey to his readers?

It has been rumored that Robbe-Grillet has more than a passing interest in S&M, so one of course thinks about that while reading this book. Is it sexual fantasies being played out on the page? I suspect that it is something more than that. The book is not a turn-on to read, and I don't think it matters what type of sex is being displayed here. It is not a question of feeling sexy or aroused. There is a distance between the reader and the author, with respect that it sometimes reads like one's shopping list of things to obtain for dinner. The violence is terrible, but it is also presented in such a fashion where you don't feel the actual deeds. It's more like watching a clinical practice of some sort taking place, and you the viewer at times, daydreams about something else - and not really focusing on the crimes that are taking place on the page.

For me, reading this book, it doesn't strike me as a work of erotica, but more significant is how the tale is told - and the dispassionate way it's told is neither shocking nor horrible. Yet, again, the actions are perfectly monstrous. If you are a fan of Sade, or serious erotic writing that conveys more than sex, this book may be of interest to you.

[Mandy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This final novel from acclaimed French writer and film-maker Alain Robbe-Grillet is nothing more than distasteful and deeply disturbing pornography. It is simply a series of descriptions of sexual violence perpetrated against young – often under-age – girls by older men. I am appalled by the guardian describing it as a “joyfully pornographic book” and “an unbound celebration of deviancy at its most explicit and imaginative”. Explicit, most definitely, but “joyful? A celebration? The rape and torture of children is a “celebration”? Not for me it isn’t. And no amount of authorial reputation excuses the publication of this vile self-indulgent fantasy. Put it in the bin not on the bookshelf.

[Beth · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a did not finish for me for reasons not related to the book content rather for one simple line which clearly represents the authors opinion. I won't bother to go into it here and will say that it's a line that many others probably wouldn't even notice in the rest of this...well yeah I'll just leave it here.

[PaperBird · Rating 1 out of 5]

Here's a book I was eager to read -- A Sentimental Novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet. I geeked out on all the nouveau romanists back in college. I remember sitting on a parking lot reading Jealousy, and an ant bit me on the balls. Now here's this last work by Robbe-Grillet, published a year before he died. It came out in France wrapped in its own condom, the publisher seems proud to report. Wouldn't want any young impressionable minds flipping through this and having their eyeballs pop out.

Because it's basically pornography? The Marquis de Sade is alive and well? But this was published by Dalkey Archive, and the back flap says "French Literature"... Even has a pseudo-scholarly introduction by the translator going off on what a treat it is to see Robbe-Grillet apply his scientific style to his actual sexual fantasies. Golden stuff he's been hoarding to himself since he was 12 years old, apparently. Wow. Some real nuggets we're dealing with.

Did this book really cause that much controversy when it came out in France? I don't remember hearing anything about it in America. Something like this came out last century, though, folks would get arrested. Now I could read this openly in my favorite Vietnamese restaurant while eating pho and the only provocative thing would be the sound of hot girls squeezing rooster sauce and making that wet shitty sound.

I can't consider this a major work because it goes against everything Robbe-Grillet fought to destroy, despite what the translator says in the intro. That is, the preference to name only certain things and depict a reality vs arriving at the truth by coldly listing facts and cataloging objects with no favoritism toward any event.

Writing porn requires that you curate a specific set of details to hopefully convey the maximum erotic impact, which since that's what Robbe-Grillet is doing here, makes me feel like he sold out to his own primal animal. Which leaves us to judge the work based on the strength of its eroticism which while subjective still requires some kind of underlying craft to "pull off" successfully, pun intended.

How does he do as a more traditional storyteller? The writing is impeccable, as expected. It's the dynamics between the characters where I feel he fails. Most good porn the heroine undergoes a transformation / degradation / awakening (and sometimes empowerment) of pussy-consciousness, the more 180 from start to finish the better. In this story the heroine at the start is already mostly on board with the father / daughter incest / BDSM program. Her lack of resistance, her eagerness to please, makes me feel like we're missing a couple of juicy "fight" chapters.

This leads the role of resistance to a cast of secondary characters we don't really care about, they're so disposable, it just becomes a slaughterfest and you're left feeling as if you were just tested on how much you can stomach. I did however enjoy the conceit of girls found guilty and subjected to arrest and rape by the police, then sexual servitude / torture / death, because of the "crime" of being too beautiful.

As far as this being "literature"... By setting all this down, he probably didn't realize how big an arena he was entering and how he could do battle with the inherent enemies of morality and social mores in an interesting way, and so became immediately "dated" as someone two or three steps behind and falling back farther the less prudish / more jaded the world gets. (His solution is to throw spears at everyone, which speaks to how threatened he probably felt, as this was his way of balancing or getting some power back. I could be wrong about this.)

At the very least this could be regarded as an artifact for case study of a brilliant 20th century novelist. The richness of detail makes me wonder if there was a dearth of pornographic materials when the author was a kid. Conversely, does anyone nowadays have sexual fantasies this ornate, or even at all, when any variety of porn is just taps away?

Why couldn't he just leave his oeuvre the hell alone? Claude Simon did, Nathalie Sarraute did. I have to conclude that like any old exhibitionist about to die, he just wanted attention.

[Anna Negrila · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is Marquis de Sade on steroids. And I think I liked de Sade better. This is cruel and violent just for the sake of it, there isn't even a moral of the story, things just happen and it seems like a fever dream.

Not a favourite. When you tell me you cut up private pieces that you eat as a delicacy after torturing a woman for hours on end you kinda lose me.

However, it is written in an interesting way and if the subject had been more tamed, I think I would have like it more.

Aaanyway, if you want to see how bad bad can get, read it. If you are sensitive, please don't come near this book, it will rattle some people.

[Kostas Kanellopoulos · Rating 1 out of 5]

ποσες φορες θα διαβασεις για ματωμενες σουφρες και βασανισμους παρθενων; ο σαδισμος εχει αποδομηθει τελεια απο τον Ονφρε ( το πουριτανικο μισος για την ηδονη) το κυκνειο ασμα του Γκριγιε ειναι αφορητο

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the best of his books that I've read, but 140+ pages of torture can get a little dull after awhile. And, much as when I tried to read De Sade, inevitably I feel a lot of compassion for the victims: I guess I just don't have it in me to be a libertine, being susceptible to the suffering of others. Unlike, say, the work of Dennis Cooper, Robbe-Grillet doesn't seem all that interested in exploring the minds and personalities of his victims: they're just meat, grist for the mill.

[Stephen]

http://www.theguardian.com/books/book...

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

[stlemon · Rating 1 out of 5]

It has been over 15 years since I've read this book and I still bring it up in current conversations about media censorship and the calls on internet about people being sick for writing or reading dark themes.

To explain, I was in high school and borrowed the book from the library with a classmate, just because we have learned about Alain Robbe-Grillet just a few classes before it and the cover was interesting.
What followed was such a strange experience in grotesque male dystopian fantasy, that while it was gross and extremely graphic, we both finished it in fascination and talk extensively.
We were not even close and the friend was this very proper catholic type of girl.

So while I don't necessarily think the book was good, and I can only have my own theories as to what male depravity this stemmed from. I don't think it has much value in commentary either.
It is a book I am glad I've read and came across, for it opened my eyes about published authors and education in ways any other experience wouldn't.
In the end there will always be depraved gross art that I cannot imagine anyone truly enjoying, but it also has to be around.
Proper warning as a teenager would have been nice, but it also is not bad per se that I've read it then.

[Brian O'Connell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Without question one of the most interesting formal variations on Sadean structure I’ve read, although the minutely described bacchanals of murderous misogyny are, predictably, hard to stomach. The spellbinding opening sequence, which evokes the haunted hallways of Last Year at Marienbad, guides the reader down a shifting narrative corridor (“unconvincingly asserting its indifference”) that gradually deforms in accordance with the narrator’s subtle presumptions and erotic fascinations. The “fairy tale” that ensues demonstrates an acute, and often darkly funny, understanding of how pedagogy, theology, aestheticism, the law, and the family all work in tandem as instruments of sexual domination in patriarchal culture. And the final line is sublime…but I need to sit with this one.

[Mark Pocha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Čo ci je to bola aká BOMBA!!
Autor je samozrejme intelektuál s dvoma čestnými doktorátmi a žiaden úchyl, ako sa veci neznalí hejterz snažia na webe presvedčiť seba aj ostatných (BTW: kamarát, ktorý si neželá byť menovaný, povedal na základe krátkeho úryvku, že toho človeka by mali zavrieť :D).
Ale k veci: po dlhom čase konečne zaujímavá a pútavá kniha, jednak formou/jazykom, ale samozrejme aj transgresívnym, provokatívnym obsahom. Zdrapila ma za uši, odhryzla mi nos a napchala mi ho do úst a potom mi do očí naliala bielidlo, aby som zabudol na písmenká v nej, lenže to nejde nejde nejde!
Fantazma par excellence, must read!!

[Zack2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sade worship made dreamy in a way that only Robbe-Grillet could. Don't read this on the train. You'll be institutionalized.

[michal k-c · Rating 3 out of 5]

say what you will about the French, no one can deny that their artists and writers are perverse freaks who will not see the kingdom of heaven.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can best describe A Sentimental Novel by three quotes from the Translator’s Preface.

“The novel purports to transform into a work of literary fiction the authors own avowed catalog of perverse fantasies, which he claimed had remained unchanged since the age of twelve, and that he had been making notes of over the years, every one consisting of transgressions perpetrated against young girls. In the course of 239 numbered paragraphs, and in a series of theatrical set pieces evoked in sumptuous detail, we read about fourteen-year-old Gigi and her education by her father (also her lover) in matters erotic, more specifically sado-masochistic, with the assistance and participation of a chorus of female children who are submitted to progressively more excruciating, savage and brutal acts of torture and rape — the reader is spared no detail of organs lacerated, blood spilled, fluids propagated. There are also digressions in the form of flashbacks and asides that fill in the story of this or that sundry character, each producing its own mini hair-raising fable within the story.”

“The close-up descriptions of the machinery of torture — the pulleys and winches and their operation, the materiality of the gruesome dildos, seats of nails, the multiple suspended parallel blades that penetrate flesh, the virgins strung up in a circle by their feet, or the redheads fed to rabid dogs — all in polished, almost scientific language, with no hint of a moral dimension, produce an unholy kind of terror and pity and firmly relegate these scenes to the realm of the unreal from which they came. This feeling of unreality is furthered by the relentless mounting intensity of the cruelties.”

“In case the reader might imagine that the book is a one note tale of grim horror, it is important to mention that, odd though it may appear, lighter touches do abound. There is tenderness between the girls, as well as in the development of the father-daughter relationship, even as Gigi submits to, or with her father's collusion delivers, gruesome punishments.”

I did not like the numbered paragraphs structure of the book. Stories continued over paragraphs and bled (no pun intended) into following stories. For books that have no study guide such as Cliff’s Notes available, I like to create my own summary document that summarizes each chapter. I found it awkward to do that with this book. I grouped the numbered paragraphs in a way that I thought was logical and summarized each grouping, quoting some portions along with my notes.

This is not a book for everyone. If you like to read the works of Marquis de Sade, you might want to read this book. On the other hand, there is no philosophy mixed in with the acts of sexual torture and perversity, as there is in de Sade’s writings.

This was Alain Robbe-Grillet’s last novel. He died less than six months after its publication. Interpret the meaning of that, if there is any, as you wish.

[Sabin · Rating 4 out of 5]

În sfârșit, după 17 ani de la apariție am citit și eu cartea asta. Am cumpărat-o de nouă, am pierdut-o în condiții misterioase, am găsit-o la un anticariat și am citit-o în final.

Iar înăuntru am găsit un Sade modern. Pe alocuri e posibil chiar să-l depășească în sadism (pun intended). Însă pachetul complet e ceva mai mult. Eticheta de pe copertă atenționează cititorul că avem de-a face cu un basm cu zâne pentru adulți, cartea s-a vandut în țiplă, iar paginile sunt netăiate (ce idee ciudată, a fost principalul motiv pentru care am luat-o).

Textul în sine e împărțit în două sute și ceva de paragrafe în care avem parte de descrieri, în principal, vizuale, ca niște tablouri. Succesiunea temporală e dată fix de succesiunea acestor scene în care mai tot timpul vedem ce se întâmplă, din când în când mai și auzim ce au de spus personajele, însă doar dacă vorbesc cu voce tare. Doar că, oricâte chei și indicii ne-ar da autorul ca să ne ajusteze așteptările, cititorul e asaltat pe tot parcursul cărții de o tiradă nesfârșită de tortúri, momente de violență și orgasme nebănuite, descrise în toată splendoarea lor. Romanul mănâncă tabuuri pe pâine (nu o să le enumăr) și se termină fără un “și au trăit fericiți până la adânci bătrâneți”, însă cu un praznic împărătesc de toată frumusețea.

Este, în schimb, un masterclass în arta observației și a descrierilor livrești, cu o structură atent concepută și riguros urmărită.

[Ben Arzate · Rating 4 out of 5]

As good as the writing in the book is, I really don't see how this book can be read as anything other than pornography. Books like Mirbeau's The Torture Garden, Bataille's Story of the Eye, and de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom are full of pornographic writing, but work on other levels as well. A Sentimental Novel, on the other hand, reads to me simply as smut. The fact the author has said in interviews that it was based on his sexual fantasies seems to back this up.

I enjoyed the writing enough that I'm adding Robbe-Grillet's other works to my list. As for this one, I only recommend it to people who already like Robbe-Grillet (who probably already have this book anyway), or to people with particularly sadistic and extreme sexual tastes.

Full Review

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's probably something important about this book. I'm not sure what it is. It's tempting to think of it as satirical, but I want to say there's more to it than that.

Yes it's difficult to get through. Yes it's strange (the fish-girl-Japanese thing at the end?). Yes it's repetitive.

I read somewhere that it can be thought of a as a psychological test, in which the reader dares him- or herself to be aroused. Robbe-Grillet said he pulled these stories from his own fantasies. As disturbing as that may seem, fantasies of this kind are probably not as uncommon as we'd like to think.

[Marc Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written novel about an alternate world in which the extremes of sado-masochistic torture are as everyday as oatmeal. Does the novel glorify the torture of underage nymphets with all the characterization of a lamp? Maybe! Nevertheless, might there be something to be said about the horrors (or sexual fantasies) abounding throughout the author's mind, displayed with such tender detail and amoral language? Yeah, maybe, probably. In the end, it's well written.

[Landjonker · Rating 5 out of 5]

A meshmerizing fairy tale for adults, very erotic.

[Carolyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lazy, obsessive, unempathetic perversion. Robbe-Grillet makes no stretch for the innovative. Fascinating only in the sheer polarity of its sadomasochism.

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

What tedious dreck. Robbe-Grillet has, of course, written obscene books before, but unlike A Project for a Revolution in New York or La Maison de Rendez-vous, this book does not play with narrative conventions very much. Indeed it's told in an almost completely linear style. So it's just one vignette of torture, rape, and debauchery after another. But it doesn't even rise to the level of, say, Delaney's Hogg, which is infused with anger and personality. Robbe-Grillet maintains his steadfast straightforward descriptions with only occasional eye-rolling embellishments, presumably because there's only so many ways you can say vulva or anus without resorting to euphemisms.

Still, there's small amusements here, in occasional digressions into the absurd laws governing trade and taxation of the torture victims. The end also expands the perspective out to take in some amusing side activities of the captives. But ultimately this is just an exercise in tedium with little to no value that hasn't been explored elsewhere.

[isaac dwyer]

Somehow too much, even for me—myself a girl who is plenty capable of enjoying things that are unforgivingly too much. That the translator has found a way to make each sentence aesthetically sound and beautiful accentuates the horror of its content.

Were this novel to have another driving plot impulse beyond merely its sadomasochistic incest fantasy component—something, something to hold onto!—the musicality of each sentence would compel me to muster the patience of suffering through, containing the puerile notion of those fantasies. I would hesitate to call this book “pornographic”. Pornography has its own storytelling conventions and forms that this simply doesn’t follow. It is a postmodern novel about a sadomasochistic incestual relationship.

Yet, as another reviewer has already pointed out, in many ways I am left in a state of wonder that this book even exists. I wouldn’t wish reading it on my worst enemy, however I could spend hours discussing a single of its vignettes to any comrade who would dare to attempt to finish it. Such is the level of its poetic puerility.

[Ezada Sinn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm struggling with it because it is so outrageous. But precisely because of it I would like to finish it and see how I will feel about it at the end. I hope it is not just a scabrous fantasies but it holds a deeper meaning.