Inseparable audiobook

‘There’s a problem child in every family: and that’s me.’Written in 1954, Inseparable by the great Simone de Beauvoir was only recently released into print and provides a look into the author’s life and friendships that would help shape her existentialist works on freedom and gender. Best known for her monumentous work The Second Sex, which lit the spark for second-wave feminism, or her Prix Goncourt winning novel The Mandarins, Inseparable is a very intimate look at de Beauvoir’s real-life friendship with Élisabeth Lacoin, called Zaza, who appears in the novel as Andrée Gallard (Simone appears as narrator Sylvie Lepage). Zaza, who tragically died just before her 22nd birthday, was a major figure in Simone’s young life, the two of them deemed to be ‘inseparable’ by their teachers, and in this story we see the early gears of thought in young Sylvie’s mind on the confines of a religious and patriarchal society on young women and those who choose to seek an independence and uniqueness of self. Having been deemed too intimate for publication in the 50s, we are now graced with this moving portrait of friendship and struggle that foreshadows the philosophical works the great feminist existentialist would write throughtout her lifetime, being a sharp criticism of oppressive systems and religion that Beauvior found suffocating to being an authentic person. Zaza and Simone (Andrée and Sylvie)While the official story is that Beauvoir thought the novel too intimate and claimed it had ‘no inner necessity and failed to hold the reader’s interest,’ there is much speculation that it was the dismissal of the work by friend and philosopher contemporary Jean-Paul Sartre that caused her to lose faith in it. As Margaret Atwood states in the book’s introduction (she does not hold back against Sartre) that Sartre found the book trivial, shocked that ‘for a materialist Marxist…the book is intensely descriptive of the physical and social conditions of its two young female characters,’ and that it was inconsequential when ‘serious’ literature dealt with the means of production of factories and agriculture. Written five years after The Second Sex, it is tragic to see the points within her great work of philosophy be made so blatantly against her own novel and the notion that the interior life of a intelligent young woman be deemed trivial. The novel is quite engaging in fact, and Beauvoir’s prose (gorgeously translated her by Sandra Smith) is very fluid—something I’ve enjoyed with her philosophical works and have found them very readable and accessible. So without further adieu, let’s talk about this work that we are finally able to read because it hit me right in the gut and I love it for it.‘Andrée was one of those child prodigies whose lives would later be recounted in books.’The dedication to Zaza at the start of Inseperable reads ‘If I have tears in my eyes tonight, is it because you have died, or rather because I’m the one who is still alive?’ Which, spoilers much? but also the framing of the novel knowing the tragic end even before beginning allows the reader to focus in with heightened attention on the emotional turmoil bubbling within the two characters that will lead to the untimely end of Sylvie’s great friendship. ‘When I was nine, I was a very good girl,’ the story begins, and Sylvie is soon acquainted with Andrée who’s bold and direct way of speaking beguiles and intrigues her as does her freedom to roam about the streets alone. The two become inseparable and while they both are top of their class their attitudes are deemed impertinent. Sylvie decides she will pursue individual freedom, inspired by Andrée’s own actions and beliefs such as when surreptitiously smoking she remarks ‘Mama forbids it; but when you start to disobey . . .’ which leads to her falling out of Christian faith. ‘I was resolutely determined to continue to eat, read, speak, and dream in whatever way I pleased. “I don’t believe in God!” I thought. How was it possible to believe in God and deliberately choose to disobey Him? I sat stunned for a moment by this revelation: I did not believe.’This lack of belief changes her perception on the world and in her outsider status as a non-believer she begins to observe how much human nature is restricted by notions of sin, especially women.‘I still haven’t told Mama that I disobeyed her, and the worst part is that I’m not sorry.’While initially rebellious, the confines of society begin to close in around Andrée. At home she is hardly afforded a moment to herself, beleaguered by an ‘enormous family: a prison, whose exits were carefully guarded.’ At the head of the household is her mother, Madame Gallard, who is said to have refused her husband twice before being obliged to marry him, and through Sylvie we witness a view of how once independent women are not only torn from their beliefs, but social expectations corner them into being authoritative parents that then perpetuate the oppressive behavior upon their daughters. The belief that getting married is the purpose of a young girl’s life is shown here, though Sylvie observes that even a partner in marriage is less a choice and more an obligation imposed. Her friend is twice removed from someone she is romantically involved with due to parent’s belief that it is not the right match, and religious beliefs inform much of the resistance. This even applies to Pascal (a stand-in for French phenomenology philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty), a man who ‘could be categorized as “a young man suitable in all respects”’ The mother demands Andrée be sent away until marriage so as not to be tempted to be in Pascal’s company, something that causes her extreme emotional distress and pressures Pascal to consider a marriage he does not find himself yet ready to enter. Which is all perpetuating a sad society of people being socially locked into actions that they are not emotionally ready for all for the sake of social manners and a fear of being ‘sinful’ if they follow their desires. This instilled fear of temptations of the flesh is part of what makes women view their own bodies with shame, de Beauviour writes in The Second Sex, adding a layer that the attraction of their body is sinful only burdens young women further and objectifies them even more.‘Do I have to spend my life fighting with the people I love?’In The Second Sex, Beauvoir examines how narratives have contributed to the Othering of women, from myths to religious stories that have been used to treat women as subservient to men and enforce moral behavior. While Sylvie feels herself free from these worries of sin, she sees the obligations imposed on her friend’s relations as a restriction of freedom, a caging of women and men into unhappy lives and marriages for no reason beyond upholding a narrative. Andrée is an interesting person in this respect, loving out of pure intentions and upholding religious beliefs out of love while acknowledging many use religion as an instrument of oppression. ‘She had discovered, with outrage, the chasm that separated the teaching of the Gospels and the self-serving, egotistical, petty behavior of self-righteous people.’ In the afterword by Sylvie Le Bon-de Beauvoir, Simone’s daughter, she writes that for Andrée: ‘faith was not, as it was for so many others, a complaisant dependence on God, a means of being right, of self-justification or fleeing responsibilities but the painful questioning of a silent, obscure, hidden God.’Her belief in wanting to be good and wanting to be happy is frequently blocked by people who claim to be doing it for her own good. ‘We were only the instruments of God,’ says Monsieur Gallard when it is already too late, and here we see how religion also becomes a scapegoat to wash one’s hands of their complicity in oppression and Andrée’s own demise. She also demonstrates how it becomes a way to avoid acknowledgement of class oppression, seeing the poor as unclean and being that way due to sin, their status as upper class being a gift from God and under no obligation to deconstruct the class structure that they profit from and use to keep others beneath them. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvior writes ‘If we do not love life on our own account and through others, it is futile to seek to justify it in any way,’ condemning the way religion forces young women to push aside their identities and convictions to create one through the justification of religious narratives. The aspects of Sylvie being condescended by Pascal for not being a believer felt all too true living in a community where I see this in my daily life. To be clear, Beauvoir’s criticism is not with religion itself, but in the ways it is wielded by others as a tool of behavior modification and subservience. She demonstrates how the narrative is used in ways that instill guilt and fear that is used to uphold systems that are in need of ethical refurbishing in order to be more equitable and humane. Most impactful is when Sylvie observes ‘The grave was covered in white flowers. In some strange way, I understood that Andrée had died, suffocated by that whiteness.’ The book is a sharp critical look at the way whitewashing life and human nature restricts freedom and suffocates people, men and women alike. This is very indicative of its time, of course, and the sexual revolution was still a decade in coming, but the lessons still echo in our world today.‘Zaza died because she tried to be herself and was convinced that such a desire was evil,’ states Le Bon-de Beauvior, and the novel functions as a chronicle on how Andrée’s desire to be good under the restrictions of social enforcement of behavior clashed with her desire to be a unique, loving individual and the friction of this due to her self-analysis as being sinful for simply being herself causes her to fracture mentally and physically. The book is a beautiful tribute to a friend now gone. As Atwood observes, the lessons Beauvior took from the time of friendship with Zaza blossomed into her philosophical lessons. ‘Perhaps she herself worked so hard to become who she was as a sort of memorial,’ Atwood writes, ‘Beauvoir must express herself to the utmost, because Zaza could not.’ It took decades to reach a mass audience, but I am thankful Inseparable has finally made it to print. This is a quick read but one that had me by the throat the whole time, all the more engaging as I am currently half-way through The Second Sex. This is a moving book and a loving look at a friendship that helped shape the philosophical world forever.4.5/5‘At every instant, blessed eternity was in play, and no clear sign was given to indicate if you were about to achieve it or lose it!’

Una historia entrañable. Novela corta autobiográfica de una amiga que tuvo Simone de Beauvoir, una amistad preciosa. Pero no es solo eso, la manera en como describe cada momento, cada actitud, te da un retrato super completo de esa época de su vida, de la infancia y adolescencia, del primer amor, la religión, la vida espiritual, y como eran tan definidas por la vida en sociedad, y por la familia en la que crecías. También ese cambio tan fuerte que se vive entre la infancia y la adolescencia, y como empieza la vida adulta. Muy hermoso y recomendado.

It's amazing to me that this completed novel was only just published, given that it was finished in 1954. The author died in 1986. The introduction by Margaret Atwood tells us that it was thought ‘too intimate’ but I don’t think that's true even by the standards then. It probably has more to do with the author's relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre. We are told that in the introduction (and also in this quote from a NYTimes review by Leslie Camhi): “Apparently, she showed the manuscript of this brief novel to Sartre, who “held his nose” at it, she writes in “Force of Circumstance,” the third volume of her memoirs. “I couldn’t have agreed more,” she tells us there; “the story seemed to have no inner necessity and failed to hold the reader’s interest.” So she set the manuscript aside.It's the semi-autobiographical story of de Beauvoir and her best friend, Zaza, starting at about ten years old. They met at an exclusive French Catholic school for girls from the ‘best families.’ They were the two best students and Simone was more dependent on the relationship than was the other girl who came from a large family with parents obsessed by their religion. Both parents were active in church groups and the family took an annual pilgrimage to the shrine at Lourdes. One daughter was already a nun, and one son a priest.The author wrote many autobiographical and semi-autobiographical novels and Zaza is featured in four of her novels. Even in this story, we learn more about Zaza’s family and life than that of Simone’s. In the second half of the book it becomes Zaza’s tragic story, not the author’s. (view spoiler)[ Zaza, (Élisabeth Lacoin), died suddenly and somewhat mysteriously at age 21. (hide spoiler)]Simone hung out with Zaza’s family. Zaza’s mother kept all her children occupied in an endless swirl of chores, visits to relatives, picnics and outings, so much so that Simone and Zaza seldom had a chance to converse together. (Idle hands are the devil's workshop, I guess.) The mother also feared Simone was a bad influence on her daughter because Simone drifted away from religious feelings very early in her life. The mother broke up a romance between Zaza (called Andree in the novel) and a neighbor boy because he is half-Jewish. Simone (called Sylvie) later ‘gives over’ her boyfriend to Andree. The mother, who ruled with an iron fist, felt that she would be ‘held responsible for the ‘sins’ of her daughters. (Too many little ‘quotes,’ I know!) A good read, worth a ‘5.’ I’m glad it finally got published. Top photo, Simone and Zaza from newyorktimes.comThe author from theparisreview.org["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>

"Inseparable" by Simone de Beauvoir is a French novel written in 1954 and remained unpublished until today, September 7, 2021!At nine years old, Sylvie and Andrée meet at their Paris school and form a friendship that takes them into young adulthood. Sylvie is watchful and conflicted. She is philosophical and not afraid to form her own opinion. Andrée is emotional and unpredictable. She is idealistic, and often unable to find her voice within her circumstances.Although very different, their loyalty to each other never falters. Their discussions explore and challenge the current norms of post WWI France: arranged marriages, religious conformity, social class and why women are viewed so poorly in the world. This story is told through the voice and memory of Sylvie and recounts their friendship through November 25, 1929 when it abruptly ends. It is beautifully written and a startlingly poignant autobiographical Coming-of-Age story about Simone de Beauvoir (Sylvie) and her 'inseparable' friend, Elisabeth ‘Zaza‘ Lacoin (Andrée). This story is a novelized account of a friendship that ends too soon, yet continues to live in the mind and heart of the author and begs to be told. In 1954 it was considered too bold for publication so it remained in Ms. de Beauvoir's possession until she passed in 1986. Her literary executor was given the rights to move forward with her unpublished work when they deemed it to be the right time. That day has finally arrived! Thank you to NetGalley, Ecco Publishing and Simone de Beauvoir for a free ARC of this book. It has been an honor to give my honest and voluntary review.

Escrito em 1954, “As inseparáveis” é um romance póstumo inédito no Brasil, e foi a minha primeira experiência lendo a memorável Simone de Beauvoir. A leitura tem como pano de fundo a amizade entre duas amigas, Sylvie e Andrée. Mas, na verdade, a autora criou essas duas personagens para escrever um romance sobre a sua própria história e de sua amiga Élisabeth Lacoin, a Zaza. “As inseparáveis” pode, portanto, ser classificado com um romance autobiográfico, em que há elementos de ficção (em maior ou menor grau) junto com um narrador que conta a sua própria historia, em primeira pessoa.A história das duas garotas começa ainda na infância, quando Sylvie e Andrée se conhecem no colégio Desir, em Paris. A relação entre duas meninas tão diferentes acaba se desenrolando em uma amizade intensa e conflituosa, sobretudo em virtude dos contrastes na educação que cada uma recebe dentro de casa. Um contaste entre mulheres que aceitavam ou se opunham às imposições de uma sociedade conservadora e religiosa do início do século XX.E é a partir das diferenças de pensamentos, e de como Sylvie se opunha aos pensamentos da conservadores da família de Andrée, que podemos ver pontos que posteriormente marcariam a filosofia da autora sobre as diferenças de gênero.Além das questões mais ideológicas, o que temos nesse livro é uma narrativa sobre uma amizade marcante e que faz sofrer. A autora enfrenta angústias da sua infância e adolescência, passando por temas como primeiro amor, religião e a dificuldade do amadurecimento.A edição conta com fotos de Simone e sua melhor amiga e cartas trocadas entre as duas amigas, além de um ótimo prefácio escrito pela filha da autora, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir. Um romance curto, delicioso e que ficará marcado para leitor!Nota 9/10Leia mais resenhas em https://www.instagram.com/book.ster/

4,5*Este livro é uma preciosidade, sobretudo para quem admira Simone de Beauvoir, e desde que soube da sua publicação que fiquei desejosa de o ler. “As Inseparáveis” só foi publicado agora, quase sete décadas depois de ter sido escrito, e além do prazer que é ler um inédito desta autora, é de grande valor histórico o facto de conter excertos das cartas trocadas entre ela e a sua amiga Zaza, a qual serviu de inspiração a esta novela, bem como várias fotografias das duas jovens e dos locais que as marcaram.Iniciei a leitura pelo enriquecedor posfácio escrito por Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, filha adoptiva da escritora, já que, conhecendo o desfecho desta amizade graças a “Memórias de Uma Menina Bem Comportada”, queria perceber o que era verídico ou ficcionado. Ao lado de Simone de Beauvoir, de 9 anos de idade, aluna da escola católica Adeline Desir, senta-se uma morena de cabelo curto, Élisabeth Lacoin, conhecida por Zaza, poucos dias mais velha. Espontânea, engraçada e atrevida, destaca-se do conformismo reinante. (...) Disputam os primeiros lugares da classe, tornam-se inseparáveis. (...) O sentimento que nutre por Zaza é de paixão, venera-a, estremece só de pensar em desagradar-lhe.Quando Sylvie conhece Andrée, admira a sua liberdade, mas essa independência tem um lado negro e opressivo. Muitas vezes invejara a independência de Andrée; de repente, pareceu-me muito menos livre do que eu. Havia todo um passado atrás de si; e à sua volta aquela grande casa, aquela família numerosa: uma prisão cujas saídas estavam cuidadosamente vigiadas.É por esta altura que Sylvie enfrenta as suas primeiras crises de fé...Uma noite, estendida num prado húmido, diante da Lua, pensei: “São pecados!” e, todavia, estava firmemente decidida a continuar a comer, ler, falar, sonhar a meu bel-prazer. “Não acredito em Deus!” disse a mim mesma. Como poderia acreditar em Deus e desobedecer-lhe deliberadamente? Por momentos, aquela evidência deixou-me estupefacta: não acreditava. ...embora a sua amiga seja uma católica fervorosa, quase mística, o que se torna uma angústia nas suas relações amorosas menos platónicas.A relação que mantinha com ele não devia ser fácil; de uma coisa eu estava certa: não conseguia convencer-se de que ele era bom; porém, queria agradar-lhe e esforçava-se por amá-lo: tudo teria sido mais simples se, tal como eu, tivesse perdido a fé quando a sua fé perdeu a sua candura. Apesar de ser convidada para a casa de férias da família Gallard, a matriarca não simpatiza com Sylvie, principalmente porque esta pretende estudar na Sorbonne e trabalhar, enquanto as suas filhas estão destinadas a casarem-se com bons partidos escolhidos pela família.- Não deve ser nada agradável viver de manhã à noite com alguém que não se ama – disse eu então.- Deve ser horrível – concordou Andrée.Ela teve um calafrio, como se tivesse visto uma orquídea; os seus braços ficaram com pele de galinha.- Na catequese ensinam-nos que devemos respeitar o nosso corpo: logo, vender-se no casamento é tão mau como vender-se fora dele.- Não somos obrigadas a casar – disse eu.Ainda que esta obra esteja somente compreendida entre a Primeira Guerra e 1929 e explore acima de tudo a intensa amizade das duas raparigas, mencionam-se algumas convulsões sociais na sociedade francesa ainda extremamente conservadora.Mantinha com Malou e o senhor Gallard uma discussão, que parecia crónica, sobre o sufrágio feminino; sim, era escandaloso que uma mãe de família tivesse menos direitos que um servente bêbedo: mas o senhor Gallard objetava que, entre os operários, mas mulheres são mais vermelhas do que os homens; no fim de contas, se a lei fosse aprovada, iria beneficiar sobretudo os inimigos da Igreja.Recomendo sem reservas, mesmo a quem nunca se estreou nas letras da grande Simone de Beauvoir, pois é uma excelente porta de entrada no seu universo: um livro acessível, rico e terno.[Obrigada, Celeste, por teres apaziguado a minha impaciência.]

This is a French novel written in 1954 by Simone de Beauvoir, just recently translated and to be released on September 7 …..35 yrs after the author’s death.Beautifully written, this tells the story of an intense friendship that starts when Simone and Zaza (Andree in the book) are 9 and they meet at school.Follows their friendship until one of them dies at age 20 due to encephalitis (you won’t believe the reason why this occurred) tragic and unnecessary.Anyway.. a beautifully written short novel.. topics: female friendship, oppression of women.The cover made me interested in the book! Thank you to Netgalley and Ecco for the ARC!

“Inseparable” .....[a never before published novel]...at 208 pages....was a story about an intense friendship — between Sylvie and Andree —as intoxicating [one sitting read]....as the enmeshed friendship between Lila and Elena in “The Neapolitan Novels”, by Elena Ferrante. ( only shorter).Being as short as it is ....I hesitate to share specific content details....Most important thing to say:This book is gorgeous right from the title. The writing is achingly beautiful. It’s bruised and breathtaking— a powerful story of love and loss....of a passionate friendship. Autobiographical in nature—written in 1954, “Inseparable” was inspired by an inseparable friendship—between Simone de Beauvoir and her friend Elisabeth ‘Zara’ Lacoin. Zara died of encephalitis at the age of twenty-one.The storytelling, written in first person, is seen through the eyes of Sylvie (who was Simone de Beauvoir). It’s Sylvie who recounts events - their friendship - coming of age experiences - between she and her Andree Gallard ( who in real life was Elisabeth Lacoin, Simone’s closest friend). Le Bon-de Beauvoir, Simone’s literary executor— is planning on releasing more unpublished fiction novels in the coming years. Before Simone died she told Le Bon “you’ll do as you think right”.... in reference to publishing her unread work. So, “Inseparable”, is just the first of other unpublished novels to follow. Sylvie and Andree first meet as young girls - nine years of age. Andree was the ‘new’ girl in class (having been homeschooled for the entire year before due to needing to recover from an accident). Sylvie was often ranked top student in her academics — Andree was brilliant as well....but she just wasn’t attached to her results. Andree’s aloofness and independence enchanted Sylvie. Their friendship grows. We learn of the different philosophies in which each were raised—meet the mothers- siblings - other friends - boyfriends - etc. Sylvie’s and Andree struggled against conventional ideas of what a woman should be in the early 20th century (obedient, devout, chaste, arrange marriages within the same circles, idealogical, religious, social, and financial status). We are taken on a journey of conflicts......the conflicts of conformity....tragedy, deadly rules, love separations, spiritual brokenness, and repression. Andree could see right through the hypocrisy, the lies of life, the egotism of moralism....(of the elite social circle).....Andree suffered quietly—(a girl that was never left alone in her big family with many siblings), but from internal isolation, from existential solitude, and from being her own torturer...tearing herself apart. This is a story that gets consumed in one or two luminous, raw, emotional, and intellectually stimulating binges. Introduction by Margaret Atwood. A couple of excerpts:“If I have tears in my eyes tonight, is it because you have died, or rather because I’m the one who is still alive? I should dedicate the story to you: but I know that you are nowhere now, and that I am speaking to you here through literary artfulness. Besides, this is not truly your story but simply a story inspired by us. You were not Andree and I am not the Sylvie who speaks my name”. “I had often envied Andree’s independence; suddenly, she seemed a lot less free than I was. Behind her, she had this past; around her, this large house, this enormous family: a prison, whose exits were carefully guarded”. Thank you Ecco publishing, Netgalley, to the beloved Simone de Beauvoir ( 1908 to 1986) ....French writer, intellectual, existentialist, philosopher, political activist, feminist, social theorist.Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiographies, and monographs. *I own a few Beauvoir books that I’ve been meaning to read for years —looking all-the-MORE-forward to reading them now. Love this type of intimate writing.

❀ blog ❀ thestorygraph ❀ letterboxd ❀ tumblr ❀ ko-fi ❀ “She had appeared so glorious to me that I had assumed she had everything she wanted. I wanted to cry for her, and for myself.” Superbly written The Inseparables is a novella that pairs an enthralling depiction of female friendship with a razor-sharp commentary on gender and religion. This is the kind of work of fiction that reads like real life, unsurprising perhaps given that Beauvoir created Sylvie and Andrée after herself and her real-life friend Zaza Lacoin.Written in a controlled and polished style The Inseparables presents us with a beguiling tale in which Sylvie, our narrator, recounts the enigmatic nature of her bond with Andrée. The two first meet as young girls while enrolled at a private Catholic school and, in spite of the divergence between their religious beliefs, they become, as the title itself suggests, inseparable. Due to the conventions of their time and society—the French bourgeois of the early 20th cent.—they cannot be too close and so have to refrain from being too intimate with one another, for example by addressing each other with the formal you.Still, they keep up a correspondence and talk at length to each other, earning themselves the disapproval of Andrée’s mother who frowns upon their, God forbid, long and possibly intimate conversations.Sylvie is fascinated by Andrée, in particular, she seems hyperaware, intrigued even, by her self-divide. On the one hand Andrée, a devout Catholic, expresses conservative ideas and opinions, which make her appear particularly naive. On the other Andrée possesses a clever mind and a propensity for expressing surprisingly subversive thoughts. Andrée is a magnetic individual who oscillates between irreverence and conformity. Sylvie, who did not grow up to be a staunchly religious individual (apropos, in a diary entry beauvoir wrote: "i have no other god but myself"), cannot always reconcile herself to Andrée’s way of thinking and struggles to understand the loyalty that Andrée has for her family, which Sylvie herself views as suffocating.As the two grow up we see how Andrée continues to struggle with understanding her own emotions, trying and failing to contain her fiercer self. We also see how her mother’s constant reprimand have affected her self-worth and distorted her view of herself. When she falls for Pascal, a puritanical young man who seriously considered being a priest, Andrée’s resolve to lead the kind of life that her family, as well as her society, is tested. She desperately wants to escape her present circumstances but this desperation ultimately results in self-sabotage. We witness her unravelling through Sylvie’s eyes, who, as much as she yearns to be of help, cannot ultimately save her.Beauviour’s piercing commentary on gender, class, and religion was profoundly insightful. She addresses these things with clarity and exactness, illustrating how fatal oppression and repression are on a person’s psyche. What I found particularly touching, and relatable, in this novel was the unrequited nature of Sylve’s love for Andrée. Regardless of whether the love she feels for Andrée is a platonic one or a romantic one, we know that Andrée doesn’t feel the same passion for Sylve. Whether she’s unwilling or unable to reciprocate the iSylve’s feelings, we do not know for certain, however, we can see how deeply this realization cuts Sylvie. Sylvie is shown to be both jealous and resentful of Andrée’s family, holding them responsible for her friend’s unhappiness. This novella’s subject did bring to mind Fleur Jaeggy’s Sweet Days of Discipline, which also explores an intense female friendship, Dorothy Strachey’s Olivia(which is far more flowery and sentimental than this but also capture a youth’s unrequited love and longing for another) as well as novel such as Abigail and Frost In May (which are both set in all-girl schools and touch on female friendships and religion). While Sylvie is both attuned and attentive to Andrée, her moods and beliefs, she does, like we all tend to do, idealise her given that she is her object of desire (whether this is desire is platonic or sexual, it's up to the reader to decide, i, to no one's surprise, felt that it was the latter).This was a riveting read. The prose is sublime, the story an equal parts evocative and tragic exploration of young & unrequited love, heartache, independence, kinship and intimacy.I will say that as much as I loved this I couldn’t help but the publisher’s short bio of Beauvoir, as well as Levy’s and the translator’s mentions of her, felt very incomplete. As far as I can recall they all omit to mention Beauvoir’s more ‘unethical’ behaviour. As a teacher, she had ‘relationships’ with her underage pupils and went on to sign a petition seeking to abrogate the age of consent in France (because of course age is just a number!). Here you might argue that those things have nothing to do with this novella or her friendship with Zaza (discussed by both Levy and the translator). But I maintain that they do. You can’t just mention the fact that she’s a feminist and try to analyse her real-life friendship with another woman or her commentary on female sexuality while at the same time omitting that in her lifetime she ('allegedly') groomed her underage female students and seemed in favour of pedophilia. That she did those things did not detract from my reading experience however it certainly made me a little bit more critical of our narrator's obsession towards her friend. Some of my favourite quotes:“Secretly I thought to myself that Andrée was one of those prodigies about whom, later on, books would be written.”“No, our friendship was not as important to Andrée as it was to me, but I admired her too much to suffer from it.”“What would I have daydreamed about? I loved Andrée above all else, and she was right next to me.”“I thought to myself, distressed, that in books there are people who make declarations of love, or hate, who dare to say whatever comes into their mind, or heart—why is it so impossible to do the same thing in real life?”“The errors I admitted were those of the soul above all: I had lacked fervour, too long forsaken the divine presence, prayed inattentively, regarded myself too complacently.”“Andrée was unhappy and the idea of it was unbearable. But her unhappiness was so foreign to me; the kind of love where your kiss had no truth from me.”“Never. The word had never fallen with such weight upon my heart. I repeated it within myself, under the never-ending sky, and I wanted to cry. ”“No doubt she loved Andrée in her way, but what way was that? That was the question. We all loved her, only differently. ”“Happiness suits her so well, I thought.”““Don’t be sad,” she said. “In every family there’s a bit of rubbish. I was the rubbish.”“For Andrée, there was a passageway between the heart and the body that remained a mystery to me. ”ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.