Apología para la mujer que escribe

by Jenny Diski

* From the award-winning author of STRANGER ON A TRAIN and SKATING TO ANTARTICA, a extraordinary novel based on a real story

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, British Literature, Historical, Adult Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Jenny Diski was a British writer. Diski was a prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction articles, reviews and books. She was awarded the 2003 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking around America With Interruptions.

Reviews

[Marina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. I wouldn't have thought that, given the subject matter, this would be a page-turner, but it kind of was. I'm a fan of Diski and her ability to understand the human mind, to be honest but empathetic to all her characters. It gets 4 out of 5 not because it's not good enough, but because it made me too sad in places. I'm weak.

[Karenina (Nina Ruthström) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jag uppskattar att läsa om en kvinnlig ”antihjälte” inte minst när hon funnits på riktigt.
Det här är det första jag läser av Diski. Blir inte enormt påverkad, men vill läsa mera av henne.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Typically superb, though the atmosphere of 16th century France here undeniably has a whiff of the 1970s London bedsit.

[Monica Akinyi Odhiambo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, well, well....I hardly read such books but I must say the title got to me so am glad I picked it up.It's been interesting, I can't believe someone can dedicate their whole lives to reading, writing and breathing books.Life has got to be about something more than books.To me the extremes in this book were out of this world but I understand her passion, and her resilience to teach herself literature and am glad women like Marie opened up doors for all women to passionately follow what they believe in. She was mocked, ridiculed but in the end she was happy doing what she loves and good thing there was a time she got some money for her upkeep. Her obsession with Michael Montaigne was ridiculous and am thinking of actually reading his essays, just to get her feel of her obsession. An amazing book, two thumbs up.

[Marty · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those historical novels that makes you want to research the main characters' lives to see how realistically the author has rendered them. Dinski is certainly unsparing of Marie le Jars de Gournay. Such much so, that I wondered if de Gournay was really that arrogant/unstable or if her writing was really that bad. I will definitely have to read her feminist works, which are supposed to be her best. I also wondered if the author exaggerated the amount of ridicule de Gournay received at the hands of Paris society. Still, it is novel and a very well-written one. It was educational in that it alerted me to a writer that I had never heard of before, and I certainly didn't know was so closely linked to Michele de Montaigne.

[Nancy Freund · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this novel quickly and finished it a week ago. Usually I'll rate a book immediately after finishing it, but in this case, the delay has influenced my opinion quite a bit. It was NOT in fact a five-star read while I read it. Many lines were poignant and beautifully composed. I admired and underlined much. Nonetheless, it was a tedious read, at times, with flowery language describing philosophical and societal norms of the 1500's, and there was so little action in the plot, it hardly made for a riveting read. Yet read on, I did! I found the initial narrative question compelling enough that I was eager to continue. Jenny Diski's decisions about how to shape the fictional versions of these historical figures were fascinating, especially in considering her own background as Doris Lessing's protogee. I didn't think of her background at all as I read this though -- it took my book club's excellent discussion of this novel to remind me of it. Ultimately, it was the extended conversation about the book that made me decide to come back in to Goodreads and review this one -- and to give it the full five stars. The way one woman's ambitions are thwarted or reluctantly nurtured throughout this text is beautifully handled. The pathetic relationships between Marie de Gournay (an unlikeable character if ever there was one!) and her beloved Michel de Montaigne (pretty darn unlikeable himself) and her maid Nicole Jaymin are such layered and complicated studies, I haven't been able to stop thinking about them and about the narrative twists Diski used to deliver a variety of messages.
One particular aspect of the plot simply didn't work for me -- I'll leave the spoiler out of this review, but will just say Diski asks the reader to willingly suspend disbelief longer than any such suspension could be possible. But having said that, the discussion my group of friends had over that point, and the novel as a whole, was one of the most vibrant and interesting discussions we've ever had. Considering none of us felt we'd recommend the book to other friends, none of us genuinely enjoyed reading it, and not all of my group even finished reading it, that's pretty surprising praise.
Still, it's probably important to note a distinction here -- tragic versus pathetic. The unfolding of Marie de Gournay's would-be intellectual life within a vibrant French salon world of noble, egotistical, shallow, and frequently cruel men, was hard to read -- especially so considering Marie's total lack of self awareness. Her largely inflated ego causes many social faux pas, for which she is humiliated and ridiculed and impoverished. It was painful to read. She is not a tragic character; she's pathetic. Every time she suffers as a result of her hubris, rudeness, or foolishness, there was no joy in schadenfreude but rather just a cringy sort of need to read the book at arm's length. But in the end, it was a revealing study of one very rare (though not particularly talented) woman of letters, and a worthy study for that.

[Robert Wechsler]

This was not, for me, the best place to start reading Jenny Diski. Her writing is good here, but not special enough to overcome my lack of interest in the novel’s two main characters, at least as presented. The problem seems to be that Diski identified too closely with both of them, so that she didn’t feel the need to make them interesting for the reader: it would naturally come across. And the reader wouldn’t mind the repetition. I made it halfway before putting it down.

[Berit Lundqvist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marie de Gournay reads the essays of the French philosopher Montaigne, and becomes obsessed by both the author and his works.

A painfully unlikeable protagonist makes the book difficult to read, and made me feel really uncomfortable. It’s a shame because the story really highlights the effects of a complex but twisted mind.

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was flabbergasted by this book and spent a good while on my review.
Sadly, it was in the lost batch, but I think it's time to mark as read.

I do have some of my notes so I will be able to add a few quotes when they turn up

[Sofie De Smyter · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 Too long-winding to my taste but a justly nuanced portrait of a complex woman (Marie de Gournay, who held the Montaigne spirit alive)

[Malena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dude effing crazy. I need to gather my thoughts on this one still… but hmmm wow

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was attracted to this on the strength of the author’s non-fiction writing in the LRB and elsewhere, and on the basis that it’s sort of about Montaigne, who is another writer I also enjoy. I say ‘sort of’ because it’s actually a fictional portrait of Marie de Gournay, who became famous in her day as the editor of and commentator on the works of that great writer. On first reading his essays she became hysterical, and when she finally met Montaigne she proved her dedication by repeatedly stabbing herself in her arm with a hairpin. To calm her (in the novel’s version of things) Montaigne agreed to appoint this determined young woman as a kind of adopted daughter in platonic and strictly intellectual terms, and though he came to neglect their relationship in later years, she never wavered in her dedication until the end of her life. It’s a remarkable story.

Marie is intensely ambitious, taking herself and her writing incredibly seriously even while she is hamstrung both by her lack of talent and by her gender. She frequently comes across as ridiculous, but the novel never leaves us in any doubt that we owe her a great deal in terms of what she preserved of Montaigne’s legacy – even though she was perhaps a little too free with her editorial amendments by modern standards. I also felt that Diski really understands Montaigne – by which I probably mean that her own interpretation chimes with my own readings of those essays – although when Marie first takes up those works and actually exclaims: ‘Monsieur de Montaigne has invented a new way to write’ it feels rather like an authorial intervention too far.

This book is really two books in one. The first book deals with Marie’s relationship with Montaigne, and it’s very good indeed. The portrayal of old Montaigne himself as a regretful and deeply flawed individual feels particularly apt. The second book centres around Marie’s later life in Paris with her servant, Jermyn, after Montaigne’s death, and Marie’s life as executor of his legacy and sometime figure of fun at court. The problem, I think, is that the focus on Marie’s revelatory experience of the essays and her intensely prideful perspective on life builds up wonderfully in the first book but then fades by the second part. Jermyn is under-developed, used principally as a tool to get to Marie, but by then we already feel we know her so well that we start to tire of these second-hand versions of all her old routines.

This isn’t to say that the writing isn’t good throughout – it’s very well written, and there are flashes of brilliance every few pages – but looking back on that second part, I find it difficult to say what it was all about. Just a lot of stuff happening. And in a way I felt it did its subject a disservice in portraying her as an embittered, pretentious old crone; is as if the author were straying too far towards the opposite lines in portraying Marie as the absurd figure of contemporary caricature, rather than the more balanced character of the first book. And then, a couple of chapters from the end, we are reminded that actually she was remarkably productive during these years, putting out essays and pamphlets of her own as well as new editions of Montaigne – but we never get much insight into any of that beyond the (mostly negative) reactions of the outside world.

It’s a really fascinating book which I’d recommend to fans of Montaigne and I feel a bit bad for only giving it three stars (even though that means ‘I Liked It’!) but I do think it’s one of those books which would be improved by having about a third cut away. Perhaps it’s a portrait I preferred from a particular angle. But then if I’m to favor stories about great literary failures for personal reasons, perhaps it’s inevitable that I’ll prefer them to be cast in a way which celebrates their enthusiasm, rather than underlining their ultimate fallibility.

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here was a historical novel with the difference. The story is about the French noblewoman who instead of following the traditional life became obsessed with reading, self-educated herself in Latin and Greek and got involved with the famous French philosopher Montaigne, who adopted her as a spiritual child and let her edit his essays after his death. As I understood Marie de Gourney was a real person who lived in the 17th century in France and dedicated her life to writing. It was an interesting piece of history and some insight into the works of famous philosopher.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a historical novel based on the life of Marie de Gournay, a 16th century writer and the editor (and protector of) Michel de Montaigne's Essays. She's a strange woman and this is something of a strange novel. Diski is a fine writer, and there were many passages I loved, in particular Marie's intoxication with books, and with the work of Montaigne in particular. Overall, however, the novel failed to engage me.

[Gerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

A charming book. Interesting if you like Michele Montaigne. Handles the nuansces of relationships very well.

[Karl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admire her for being able to write an interesting historical novel about less-than-admirable people.

[Ruth Pellegrini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny, sad and cringingly embarrassing in places! Really enjoyed this one.