Overview
A pulpy tale of mismatched twins struggling to embody the perfect woman: ""Effortlessly cool and slyly spiky, Despentes probes the dynamics of fame, beauty, and female competition, putting her finger on the pulse of what it's like to wear the daily drag of femininity-and then pressing down, slowly and calmly, right where it hurts"" (Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine). Claudine has always been pretty and Pauline has always been ugly. But when Claudine wants to become famous, she convinces gloomy Pauline-with her angelic voice-to pretend they're the same person. Yet just as things take off, Claudine commits suicide. Pauline hatches a new scheme, pulling on her dead sister's identity, inhabiting her apartment, and reading her mail. As the impersonation continues, Pauline slowly realizes that the cost of femininity is to dazzle on the outside while rotting away on the inside-and that womanhood is what ultimately killed her sister. ""It's pulp in every sense: propulsively readable, violent, sexy, with all the satisfaction of an inevitable ending. And yet it's also a feminist parable, blunt and unrelenting in its wrath, and it feels as fresh now as it would have ten years ago.""-The Paris Review
Full Product Details
Author: Virginie Despentes ,
Emma Ramadan
Publisher: Feminist Press at The City University of New York
Imprint: Feminist Press at The City University of New York
ISBN: 9781936932276
ISBN 10: 193693227
Pages: 245
Publication Date: 27 September 2018
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Available To Order
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.
Reviews
Pretty Things is the type of rare, enticing book you devour in a fever, caught up in how blatantly, wickedly fun it is to watch these characters chase down their own ruin. Effortlessly cool and slyly spiky, Despentes probes the dynamics of fame, beauty, and female competition, putting her finger on the pulse of what it's like to wear the daily drag of femininity--and then pressing down, slowly and calmly, right where it hurts. --Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine Pretty Things is a biting commentary on the devil's bargain of conforming to modern femininity. Intensely visual and viscerally felt, Despentes presents a sort of parodic male gaze of narration that piles sentences and clauses upon the reader like so many layers of makeup. By the end you're left wondering what, exactly, the end result of this game of gender is all for, and what has been lost along the way. --Vanessa Martini, City Lights Bookstore
Author Information
Virginie Despentesis a writer, filmmaker, and noted French feminist critic. She is the author of many award-winning books, includingKing Kong Theory,Apocalypse Baby(winner of the 2010 Prix Renaudot), and theVernon Subutextrilogy (shortlisted for the 2018 International Booker Prize). She co-directed the screen adaptations of her controversial novelsBaise-MoiandBye Bye Blondie, and served as screenwriter for the adaptation of her novelPretty Things. Emma Ramadan.
