The Planetarium

by Nathalie Sarraute, Maria Jolas

A young writer has his heart set on his aunt's large apartment. With this seemingly simple conceit, the characters of The Planetarium are set in orbit and a galaxy of argument, resentment, and bitterness erupts. Telling the story from various points of view, Sarraute focuses below the surface, on the emotional lives of the characters in a way that surpasses even Virginia Woolf. Always deeply engaging, The Planetarium reveals the deep disparity between the way we see ourselves and the way others see us.

Genres: Fiction, France, French Literature, Classics, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature

246 pages, Paperback

First published May 25, 1959

About the author

Nathalie Sarraute (July 18, 1900 in Ivanovo, Russia – October 19, 1999 in Paris, France) was a lawyer and a French writer of Russian-Jewish origin.

Sarraute was born Natalia/Natacha Tcherniak in Ivanovo (then known as Ivanovo-Voznesensk), 300 km north-east of Moscow in 1900 (although she frequently referred to the year of her birth as 1902, a date still cited in select reference works), and, following the divorce of her parents, spent her childhood shuttled between France and Russia. In 1909 she moved to Paris with her father. Sarraute studied law and literature at the prestigious Sorbonne, having a particular fondness for 20th century literature and the works of Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf, who greatly affected her conception of the novel, then later studied history at Oxford and sociology in Berlin, before passing the French bar exam (1926-1941) and becoming a lawyer.
In 1925, she married Raymond Sarraute, a fellow lawyer, with whom she would have three daughters. In 1932 she wrote her first book, Tropismes, a series of brief sketches and memories that set the tone for her entire oeuvre. The novel was first published in 1939, although the impact of World War II stunted its popularity. In 1941, Sarraute, who was Jewish, was released from her work as a lawyer as a result of Nazi law. During this time, she went into hiding and made arrangements to divorce her husband in an effort to protect him (although they would eventually stay together).
Nathalie Sarraute dies when she was ninety-nine years old. Her daughter, the journalist Claude Sarraute, was married to French Academician Jean-François Revel.

From Wikipedia

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Things… Things… Things… The aunt contemplates the things in her apartment…

…her decorator was right, everything depends on the surroundings, so many things enter into play… this beautiful piece of oak, this wall, this curtain, this furniture, these little odd pieces, what has all this got to do with a hairdresser’s parlor… one should rather think of the romanesque doors in stately old mansions, or in châteaux… No, she has no need to worry, the whole thing is in perfect taste, quiet, distinguished…

The aunt, her nephew, the nephew’s wife, her parents, his parents, his acquaintances… They interact with things… They interact with each other… They think about each other… Their thoughts aren’t flattering… And the nephew’s mother-in-law recalls her daughter wedding…

And everything had gone perfectly, it had all taken place as if by a miracle, enough to make all the mothers, all their friends, turn pale with envy… the real Prince Charming, appearing at a given point… She herself had been beguiled, she herself, she’s well aware of it, had encouraged them. There were a few drawbacks, of course… but he was charming, he was handsome, he was intelligent, very gifted… whom else should she look for? and where to find him? True, she had noticed from the beginning a few little knots in the beautiful tapestry they had embroidered: a few defects of workmanship, undoubtedly, in the so prettily woven woof…

They acquire some attributes of their things… They take after their things… Some animated articles of furniture, probably… Like planets they move in their predestinate orbits… But they’re not real planets… They’re just images of planets in the planetarium…
The nephew craves his aunt’s bigger apartment but she has no wish to part with it…

“Their flat seemed so small to me… and for me here, this is much too big. But, as a matter of fact, I don’t see very well how... where should I go with all of these things?… all this furniture, these memories?… I couldn’t be separated from them, they mean a lot to me… And then, I’m accustomed to this house, this neighborhood…”

Worshipping things turns the owner into their slave.

[William2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Dalkey Archive reprint is a brutal evisceration of bourgeois materialism, brilliantly written. The novel was originally published in 1959. It's essential reading, especially for anyone interested in the great works of twentieth-century France.

Parisians Alain and Gisele are sick of living in their tiny, cramped flat. They can't have anyone in. It's just too tiresome! Alain, a writer, can't work when Gisele is at home. So without the hindrance of anything resembling conscience, they attempt by means of suasion to remove Alain's aunt, Berthe, from her own fabulous apartment. Why does a dotty old woman need a fantastic apartment like that anyway? She can't possibly appreciate it as much as they would.

It's all about materialism, overweening materialism that triggers hubris. The characters' lives are comprised entirely of things with no self questioning or introspection. Their contempt for each other in their relentless quest for objects is appalling. The novel strikes one almost as a exposé, revealing an all too contemptible world.

I was stunned by the novel's brilliance. Perhaps because of the publication date it unspooled in my mind like a François Truffaut film--in black-and-white, complete with frame-jutter and emulsion scratches. Sarraute's contempt for her characters is profound, but this is subtext. I think it's a wonderful book for Sarraute's penetrating use of third-person free-indirect speech and the psychological depths this device allows her to plumb.

[Alialiarya · Rating 3 out of 5]

هرچند از کودکی ساروت رمان بهتری‌ست اما برعکس کودکی که عیش مدام بود و جمله جمله‌اش را می‌شد زیست و مزه کرد افلاک نما احتمالا از افراطی‌ترین داستان‌های منسوب به رمان نو فرانسه است و خواندنش واقعا سخت. بنظرم حتی برای آشنایان با رمان نو هم این کتاب فضا و جهان متفاوتی را رقم می‌زند. افلاک نما دور موضوعات می‌چرخد و سعی می‌کند با بهره‌گیری افراطی از عقاید رمان نو داستانش را پیش ببرد. البته از نویسنده‌ای که اولین بار لغت ضدرمان توسط یک متفکر(سارتر) درباره‌ی داستانش بکار رفته انتظار دیگری نمی‌توان داشت. کتابی با چند شخصیت و یک داستان یک خطی(جابجایی میان دو خانه) که توانسته با استفاده درست از تکنیک به روان‌کاوی شخصیت‌ها بپردازد. ساروت بارها راوی‌اش را میان شخصیت‌ها جابه‌جا می‌کند و در تغییر راوی متوجه پوچی و عدم استقلال و هویت آن‌ها می‌شویم. کتاب پر است از جملات درخشان و عمیق که به مخاطب برای درک سرگشتگی روح انسان مدرن کمک می‌کند. کتاب سختی بود که خوشحالم از پسش برآمدم اما برای جهان من نبود. جهان من نه جهان ادبیات. در ادبیات هیچ منع و قراردادی منطقی نیست

ترجمه‌ی نونهالی در این‌جا هم مانند کودکی شاهکار است.
برای شناخت بیش‌تر رمان نو حتما سراغ آری و نه به رمان تو با ترجمه‌ی درخشان بدیعی بروید

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

The terrible devastation of what we imagine other might be thinking of us . . . the yawning gaps left by obsessive introspection in the midst of our conversations . . . given all the perils of our own minds, it's rather astonishing that we're able to interact with others . . . to live in the world with other people . . . at all, really.

A bit of Woolf's multi-viewpoint voice, untethered and drifting, a bit of the new novel that Sarraute helped found, a bit of interwar-Kavan's cynicism at mercurially fluctuating emotional states -- rarely and fleetingly in accord, if ever.

On the one hand a skillful and unique micro-dissection of human interaction. Not so different, really, from the common-utterances-under-the-microscope story-essays of The Use Of Speech. On the other, though those were essays, sort of, and this a novel, it is a novel concerned with mostly inconsequential things. The entire plot: a young writer distracts himself from writing by hoping to acquire his aunt's large apartment. I see how the utter mundanity serves Sarraulte's purposes, ordinary interactions with the guts dragged out and strewn bloodily across the page. But I still could hope for a little more narative tension, or a protagonist with slightly less petty concerns: I couldn't care less about the outcome, all pleasure here is not in what happens but how it is conveyed.

[Lee Foust · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is remarkable (and, for me, 5-star worthy) for the sheer originality and effectiveness of its narrative technique. Serraute here expands on the impressionistic (for lack of a better word) method of her earlier Tropisms (an old favorite of mine)--brief phrases echoing the interior lives of ordinary people in quite ordinary situations recounted as if nothing before or after these tiny moments, these brief evocations of personality, has ever or will ever matter as much. It's a bit like seeing people through a microscope, as a scientist would examine an organism and its foibles, shifting interior world, its fears, triumphs, and particularly the human organism's radical mutability in terms of impressions and feelings when interacting with its fellows.

Although radically original and arresting, The Planetarium did remind me of a couple of other novels. First Virginia Wolf's The Waves came to mind, with its interior monologues and terrifically accurate reportage of dialogue as a series of broken and yet connected phrases and fragments. Proust's In Search of Lost Time also popped into my head several times while I read The Planetarium--yes, partially because of the Parisian setting and the fact that I spent almost all of last year reading Proust's series--but mainly because of the minuteness of the examination of human beings and their social interactions. Although Sarraute has a more fragmentary and impressionistic way of constructing these fleeting observations of the clouds of emotion passing through the sky within each of us, she, like Proust, is a mistress of laying bare the social animal in all of its emotional nudity. Arresting and fascinating without ever leaving a rather banal world that's all too familiar.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd not heard of Nathalie Sarraute before, but she was one of the pioneers of the Nouveau Roman style of writing which arose in the 1950s and whose most famous exponent was Alain Robbe-Grillet.

This novel is structured as a mixture of dialogue and interior monologue. The plot itself is deliberately focused on trivial, everyday matters. An elderly lady fussing over minor details of the decor of her apartment, a young married couple who's husband is the nephew of the old lady and has his eye on claiming her apartment.

Serrault has these inconsequential topics being discussed contrasting with hyperbolic interior monologues where the most minor faux pas is elevated to almost mythical proportions. I found that contrast rather amusing.

[Alec · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is astonishing, how from a text about an elderly lady grieved by an inappropriate door-knob, with more suspension points than letters, after some 30 pages a novel of such structural beauty and precision emerges, authentic and realistic down to every word, a sad workshop in thought-hearing, well worth rereading most of it twice, thrice, spasmodically, paragraph-wise, sentence-wise, to understand whose head we have been placed in in this particular passage.

[Jim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got about 50 pages into this swirling mass of snits regarding the narrator's aunt and her issues with the interior decoration of her apartment. It's been a long time since I've done this, but I cannot read this mass of nothingness without intense ennui. So this one gets hurled at the wall.

[Sonia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Le roman est très impressionnant sur le plan technique. Mais passé l'étonnement du début et le plaisir de comprendre comment la narration fonctionne, cette histoire de famille et d'ameublement est un poil ennuyeuse. Je soupçonne(ahaha) l'écriture de Sarraute d'être plus adaptée à la nouvelle qu'au roman.

Sur la définition de soi que l'on cherche dans l'acquisition d'objets, je trouve "Les choses" de Perec plus fort.

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

i have to admit i was disappointed not to like this book as much as i enjoyed portrait of man unknown, but i could tell i would not, right away, as i became deeply involved in the first work, and finished in a day, but i stopped after the first battle over the easy chairs and had difficulty picking up again when i came back to it later.

i guess when it comes down to it, it's the characters sarraute chooses to focus in this book that annoy me. i'm one of these people who have to be able to empathize with characters on some level, and that's why i can only give this book a three. there are unusually startlingly beautiful and clear passages, and similes that i like but the petty bourgeois pursuits of the planetarium didn't seem to be as tempered with the desperate humanity in portrait of a man unknown. those characters were crazy, but i cared about them. these, especially alain, and his aunt, i want to take by the nose, and twist, and twist.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Le Planétarium" de Nathalie Sarraute est un des derniers chef-d'œuvre du genre du "Nouveau Roman" un mouvement incontournable de la littérature française qui est maintenant, Dieu Merci, derrière nous. Dans ce roman Sarraute réalise le tour de force d'unir le féminisme britannique avec le nouveau roman. "Le Planétarium" rassemble énormément aux "Vagues" de Virginia Woolf dans le sens qu'elle est constitué des monologues incohérents des personnages qui manquent de lucidité. Chez Woolf le désespoir prime. Chez Sarraute c'est le questionnement qui domine.

[emmarps · Rating 3 out of 5]

3e lecture : J'arrive encore à être surprise de la richesse de ce roman. Rien n'est laissé au hasard et nombreuses sont les incises métalittéraires voilées que je trouve presque malicieuses. Un été de plus passé avec Le Planétarium partout sur moi...

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Young love meets materialism.

A newly married couple in France is obsessed with acquiring material things, especially antique furniture. They live in a tiny apartment. It’s unclear how the young people support themselves since no work is ever mentioned. However, the young man, who aspires to become a writer, did publish something. He’s supposed to be working on his thesis to become a professor but seems ambition-less. They blame the small apartment in which “he can’t work.”



A solution: talk his widowed, wealthy aunt into moving out of her large, lavishly furnished apartment and giving it to them. The aunt would move elsewhere into an appropriately-sized apartment. This elaborate endeavor becomes the main focus of the story. In his various machinations, the young man talks his wife into appealing to his own father to talk to the aunt (his father’s sister). Can she charm her father-in-law into pleading for them with his sister?

Furnishings and furniture symbolize this obsession with materialism that affects all the characters. The young couple is fascinated by a bergère they can’t really afford. (I had to look it up: an antique, long-seated armchair). The aunt has just renovated her apartment with the installation of an oval door and velvet curtains. The young man’s father prizes his new glass-fronted bookcase that the young people make fun of it. The young man’s mother-in-law insists she wants to buy the couple ‘functional chairs’ and they see this as a ‘control’ and ‘power’ thing to influence their marriage by ‘setting them straight.’



Several people in the story seem to have manic depressive traits. The old aunt is at first glowing with satisfaction at the renovation work she’s having done and praising the workmen; the next day she thinks it looks cheap and the workmen were slobs. The young man, who can’t bring himself to actually do any work or research, also swings between moods of depression and elation.

Another extended thread becomes the young man’s obsessive adulation of an older woman writer; a Grand Dame of French literature, who runs a kind of literary salon. But instead of gathering peers, she attracts young people of both sexes who sit at her feet while she pontificates.



Almost all …of the story…is told in streams of consciousness…in page-length paragraphs…with an ellipsis as the most common form of punctuation.… The narration in a paragraph can switch from first person to second person to third person. The dialogue is contained within these paragraphs and it requires careful reading to separate from the stream what someone wants to say, or could have said, or should have said, from what they did say.

As an example of the writing style, here’s a passage of dialog spoken by the young married woman:

“I thought that we might make a plaster ledge, very wide, you remember, like in that house… - Which house, darling? - You know... Not at San Giminiano...no, I think it was near Lucques…We saw a tower in a village, on the hill...Near Lucques, yes, that was it: San Miniato, Frederic II’s tower...Well then, just after San Miniato…you remember that old farm where we went in...There was a big, square courtyard with old paving stones and a tree, you don’t remember?... Yes, you do...near a small lake…it reminded us of the enchanted tree we saw in Scotland...I made you come back to look out the window of a low-ceilinged room…Well, the window had a ledge, I showed it to you...and we could get an old bench...you can certainly find one…with short legs, sort of dumpy, an old bench all shiny with age, the sun would strike it...it should have a perfectly straight back...or rather no, no back...Why, you’re crazy, Alain, people can see us...what must they think... - They must think that I adore you...that we are like two lovers... – That’s true, that will set their minds at rest. A little while ago, I said to myself…didn’t you?...that we gave the impression of two burglars, looking over the premises. Getting ready to do the job...We were hiding there like two criminals...”

This is a book that you will love or hate. People say that occasionally but I think the GR ratings show this to be the case. It’s rated low GR (3.6) and has almost as many 1s and 2s as 5s. And if you look at reviews you will see “brilliance” and “crap.” I’ll give it a 3. I read one other work by this author that I enjoyed a bit more: Tropisms Sarraute wrote about ten novels; all appear to have been translated into English. This one, Planetarium, was published in 1959.



The author (1900-1999) was a Russian Jew who left Russia for Paris in 1909. I’m fascinated by the coincidence that my previous review, The Dogs and the Wolves, was a book by a female Ukrainian Jew, Irene Nemirovsky. Irene, who was born in 1903, left for Paris in 1917. Both authors wrote in French and both were persecuted as Jews in WW II. Nathalie divorced her non-Jewish husband to protect him and then managed to hide in France for the duration of the war. Irene was murdered at Auschwitz.

[Edited 1/28/24, spoilers hidden]

Two photos of Paris apartments from parisdesignagenda.com and veranda.com
A bergère from pamono.com
The author from larousse.fr /encyclopedie

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Je vais commencer ce compte rendu en disant que ça fait longtemps depuis que j’étais à l’université et étudiant la langue française.

Avant de commencer ce livre, je devrais rendu compte que c’était un livre dans le style “stream of consciousness” et c’est peut être trop compliqué pour mon niveau de français. Quand même, je dirais que j’ai compris peut être 60-70% du livre. Je trouvais que le livre était vraiment un peu trop lent pour moi… il y a beaucoup de dialogue et pas beaucoup d’action. C’était une étude intéressant des liens familiales et de l’identité, mais le manque de ponctuation et les longues blocs de texte était un peu trop pour moi.

[Audrey Favre · Rating 1 out of 5]

En toute honnêteté : je n'ai rien compris à ce livre. Acheté un peu au pif dans une brocante parce que je voulais un classique écrit par une auteure qui me sorte de mes thèmes de prédilection... je me retrouve nez-à-nez avec une oeuvre emblématique du Nouveau Roman... je n'étais pas prête. C'était un peu idiot, ce choix d'un livre de 1959. Peut-être aurais-je pu... Si j'avais su... Mais non... Je suis allée jusqu'au bout, obstination, acharnement, consternation, épuisement, dans l'espoir de voir où l'auteure voulait en venir... mais je crois que ce mépris... des codes du roman, de l'intrigue, de la ponctuation même... Tous ces trois petits points... et ces personnages, ce point de vue incertain, ces monologues de dix pages, petit rire jaune, ces situations ubuesques, ce style si élégant mais pourtant ardu, ce titre incompréhensible... ne seraient-ils qu'un reflet creux de la vacuité de la condition humaine ? Je... Je vais aller prendre un doliprane.

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

if i could give half stars, i'd go with three and a half. her style, even in translation, is really interesting, hard to get used to, a little difficult to navigate. to me this novel seemed, for a long time, to be simply another take on the reality/appearance binary. but then i decided that wasn't it at all, and it's much more about how we influence others unwittingly and how much people are affected by not just what we say and do, but also by what people think we might say and do, or what we might be thinking. and sort of how fucking needy we all are. the plot, what it's about is very domestic, which isn't usually my thing. but it was handled in a very interesting way, and i look forward to reading some of her other novels.

[pooneh · Rating 5 out of 5]

ناتالی ساروت خالق آثاری چون: چهره يك بيگانه، مارترو، عصر بدگماني، افلاک نما، بين زندگي و مرگ و نمايشنامه هاي: سكوت، دروغ، ايسما، به خاطر يك بله يا يك نه ناتالی ساروت در 18 ژوئیه 1900 در روسیه به دنیا آمد و دو سال بعد، پس از جدایی پدر و مادرش مقیم فرانسه شد. در سال 1925 با ریموند ساروت در دانشکده آشنا شد که به ادعای خودش بهترین و اولین خواننده‌ی همیشگی آثارش بوده، کسی که مفهوم تراوشات قلمی او را چنان که بایست درمی‌یافت. ادامه:
ketabdarkhaneh.blogfa.com/post-31.aspx

[Robert McTague · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sarraute creates inner worlds as complex and convincing as any you'll ever read...but the book (except in a few, rare instances) isn't hard to follow. Your mind will race as you try to discern which character's take is the most/least reliable, and be left to wonder how human social protocols function as well as they do. A great book--she's plumbed the depths of her characters' minds better than I ever have my own.

[Romane Pl · Rating 1 out of 5]

J'ai lu les 120 premières pages soit la moitié du livre et je n'ai absolument rien compris du propos du livre. Ça m'est passé complètement au-dessus. C'est bourgeois, il est question d'hommes charismatiques a souhait et de décoration intérieure. Autant dire que je ne vais pas me forcer à aller plus loin dans un tel supplice.

[A30 · Rating 4 out of 5]

به نظر من بعد از خواندن هر صفحه از کتاب باید چشم هارو بست و هرچی که از آن صفحه توی ذهنت باقی مانده رو احساس کرد . تنها راهی که بعد از دوبار خواندن این کتاب باعث شد کمی این نوشته و نویسنده رو درک کنم همین بود.

[Amira Kaadan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very annoying book.

[Jaci Lord · Rating 3 out of 5]

I needed to push through. There are moments of brilliance though.

[Ned Wheaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this novel, which is certainly one of the best I've read this year, unpleasant to read at times. The characters whose minds we are forced to inhabit are plagued at every turn by paranoia, insecurity, bitterness, and resentment. Each of them is deeply concerned with the figure they cut in front of others. Their self-images are unstable and vulnerable to attack; they often find themselves cast into roles they have not chosen. Their thoughts, which we read in a sort of stream-of-consciousness style, are a grotesque tangle of second- and third-order concerns: do my mannerisms seem affected, am I betraying my true intentions, have I fooled myself into believing a lie, and so on. The main character, Alain, is the worst of them. In his efforts to improve his standing among the artists and intellectuals of Paris he reveals himself to be a contemptible egotist. He is extremely sensitive and suspicious, perceiving threats everywhere. Lacking any sense of proportion, he is capable of dwelling obsessively on the smallest remark or the most subtle expression. Even after he gets everything he wants, it's clear that he'll never be secure in his happiness.

I haven't really done justice to the book in my description. It's not so relentlessly negative as I've made it seem. The characters are depicted with more sympathy than I've indicated. There's a lot more going on thematically. It's a rich, original, superbly well-written novel which leaves me wondering why Nathalie Sarraute is not more widely read.

[Anya Kenaz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Des longueurs, des longueurs... "Tout ça pour ça"... J'ai dû passer à côté, ou je me suis perdue dans cette myriade de points de suspension qui n'en finissent jamais et donnent un effet trainant insupportable au livre. j'ai aimé, d'abord, cet parti pris, cette volonté de plonger dans la psychologie des personnages, le pas trainant, et puis... Et puis passé un certain nombre de page ça en devient insupportable. Ça se traine, ça se traine, et c'est énervant d'injustice. On a l'impression qu'Alain n'est bon qu'à geindre, se plaindre, se sentir persécuté en permanence et c'est infernal, et sa vieille tante, manipulable à souhait, qui tente de résister, que personne ne croît, qui tente enfin de conserver un peu de sa fierté et qu'on fait disparaître finalement comme si elle n'avait jamais été, alors même qu'elle (ou du moins son appartement, mais sa résistance aussi) était le coeur de l'histoire.

Ce livre m'a énervée, pour bien des raisons: le rythme affreusement lent, l'injustice, la manipulation, ce rythme infernal que je ne citerais jamais assez, les jérémiades, et ce final presque attendu, qui porte un sens littéraire intéressant, certes, pensé, et presque drôle quand on pense au livre dans son entièreté. Mais j'ai presque l'impression, avec l'ultime phrase, que l'autrice s'amuse du temps qu'elle m'a fait perdre, et ça me fait rire jaune. Peut-être alors qu'avec un peu de maturation, je lui trouverais un charme nouveau, mais, à chaud, je suis écœurée pour un moment...

[Binston Birchill · Rating 5 out of 5]

“There’s the doorbell. What is it? Who is it? What’s that? What it about? Why it’s the door. Which door? Why the door she ordered, the door she had taken back to be repaired… it had been spoiled, there were holes, marks, but they don’t show anymore, it has all been fixed, they planed it, sandpapered it, polished it… they’ve brought it back. It’s there in the landing. They should go now, they should leave her alone… this is really not the moment, she feels like driving them away. But there they are, impassible, inexorable, the blind tools of a mocking fate.”

The Planetarium might be rather mundane if told in another form, but Surraute compels with her variety of voices, sometimes switching consciousness mid paragraph. With a variety of social situations and voices The Planetarium is an ever changing and engaging novel.

For me, stream of consciousness captures the complexities of human mind better than any other device. Self doubt, bitterness, conflicting thoughts, and all the things we don’t say out loud are captured herein. There is so much to explore. As Proust has shown, any novel, no matter its length, can only scratch the surface of the human mind, but stream of consciousness comes the closest.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

“’I must admit to you...It’s funny...I’m always a bit bored...And yet she’s not stupid, intelligent even, if you like, but I don’t know why, she bores me...’”

A quotation from the book...so it must be true. Except that I do know why I find this novel so boring; it’s because Nathalie Sarraute reveals the hidden thoughts (or “sub-conversations”) of bourgeois characters who are so shallow their thoughts are barely below the surface.

The miserable Alain, for example, spends most of the novel trying to impress the literary doyenne Germaine Lemaire. His thoughts? He frets...at length...about the impression he makes before meeting her, when he is meeting her, and after he meets her. It is pretty much exactly what you’d expect. The combination of thoughts and dialogue, as the author moves erratically from character to character, does illustrate the difference between outward display and inner reality. But in The Planetarium both outward display and inner reality are unremarkable, equally superficial, and...well...obvious. The people who appear greedy are revealed to be greedy. The people who appear insecure are revealed to be insecure.

True to the characters, the writing is also unremarkable. It is (in the words of Brigid Brophy) “translated into not very svelte American” by longtime friend Maria Jolas, so that the Parisians say “darn” and “gee” when excited, which doesn’t improve the atmosphere.

For an author famed for her innovation, this is a disappointingly ordinary novel.

[Hester · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found a second hand copy in my local bookshop and so glad I took a chance . If you like Proust , Joyce and Woolf you'll like this too. Stream of consciousness masterpiece. Post war Paris . Ruthless dissection of intellectual society , avarice , materialism and status
, we are under the fragile skin of several characters as they navigate their relationships. Nothing really happens but everything happens. It's like Austen without a plot to reveal character but we truly know these people .

It's timeless but I can't help thinking that the experience of antisemitism up close and personal in occupied France was running like a deep base note through every page . Nothing is what it seems . There is no trust . We are all fallible.

[Damian Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It would feel somehow wrong to give a book like this less than four stars, yet I found it hard to care about these tepid people and their petty concerns. What worked, to a point, in The Golden Fruits falls a little flat here. This book is often compared with Virginia Woolf's The Waves, yet the latter featured far more complex interpersonal dynamics, better prose, and, most importantly, a subtle undercurrent of a sort of primitive, nature-based occultism that ran all through the text, where Sarraute tends to stick with the purely mundane. One thing that can be said for Sarraute, though—there's nothing the slightest bit twee in her writing. She plays the part of the dispassionate observer perfectly. Now, if only she could do so with the mystery and elegance of Duras.

[Refrescospepito Canarias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una pareja de recién casados, intenta convencer a la anciana tía, de él, para que le ceda su magnífico piso de cinco habitaciones en el centro de París. Así, según avanza el libro, la joven pareja irá recurriendo a métodos cada vez más siniestros para que la tía claudique.

Es una buena novela. Uno tiene que estar muy atento para no perder el hilo, pues Sarraute usa un lenguaje rocambolesco y oculta las acciones de los personajes y las situaciones bajo diversas capas de palabras y extraños giros; capas que uno tiene que atravesar, con mucho esfuerzo, para llegar al significado de cada frase.
Un auténtico "tour de force".

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

An impulse purchase that, sadly, failed to pay off. To be honest, I had buyer's remorse over a 250 page stream-of-consciousness book, which would be difficult with a single point-of- view, but several proved too much for me. Moreover, the only character I found interesting was the aunt in the coveted flat. Won't beat up on myself too much though, as it seemed dated (postwar era), with a target audience as French intellectuals.