Sarai Walker on LADIVINE by Marie NDiaye
#30Authors is an event started by The Book Wheel
that connects readers, bloggers, and authors. In it, 30 authors review their
favorite recent reads on 30 blogs in 30 days. It
takes place annually during the month of September and has been met
with incredible support from and success in the literary community. It has also
been turned into an anthology,
which is currently available on Amazon and all author proceeds go to
charity. Previous #30Authors contributors include Celeste Ng,
Cynthia Bond, Brian Panowich, and M.O. Walsh. To see this year’s full line-up,
visit www.thebookwheelblog.com/30authors or
follow along on Twitter @30Authors.
The best way to
read Ladivine is to know very little
about it in advance, which makes reviewing it tricky. Part of the pleasure of
the novel comes in the unexpected and sometimes shocking ways it unfolds. Without
giving too much away, the novel focuses on three generations of women: Ladivine,
an immigrant to France from an unnamed, presumably African country; Ladivine’s
daughter Malinka, who changes her name to Clarisse; and Clarisse’s daughter,
also named Ladivine. The story begins with Clarisse, who grows up embarrassed
by her mother, a kind-hearted woman who works as a maid. The novel is in part a
meditation on race and colonialism, but these issues are never addressed
explicitly. We learn that Clarisse’s mother is black, that her unknown father
is probably white, and that Clarisse is able to pass as white, but the reader
is left to figure out all this on her own.
Clarisse derisively
refers to her mother as “the servant,” and she does her best to escape her
mother and reinvent herself with a new identity. She marries and has a daughter;
both her husband and child think she was orphaned when she was young. Clarisse
secretly visits her mother once a month and helps financially support her,
treating her in an outwardly cold and cruel way, but inside feeling tortured
over her feelings for the sad, abandoned woman who raised her.
No one in
Clarisse’s new life really knows who she is, and when she finally decides to
reveal her true self, the consequences change the lives of everyone around her.
In the most compelling part of the book, we meet Clarisse’s daughter, now an
adult, who doesn’t even know she has a grandmother for whom she is named. While
on vacation in an unnamed, tropical country — presumably the one from which her
grandmother came — she finds herself in bizarre, dream-like, sometimes violent
circumstances that she doesn’t understand, which threaten to consume her.
This novel is
strange, and it will likely be a struggle for anyone who can’t embrace its dark,
beautiful, mesmerizing strangeness. It incorporates elements of magical
realism, and can be disorienting, which is part of its power. The first part of
the novel is written in a cold, abstract style, which mirrors Clarisse’s personality,
but one of my favorite things about this book is the way it shifts to different
characters’ points of view and immerses the reader in each of their worlds. The
novel starts off as one kind of book, and ends up as something far different.
Ladivine
is my introduction to NDiaye’s work, and I’ll certainly be reading through
her backlist now, beginning with her previous novel, Three Strong Women, which won the Prix Goncourt, France’s most
prestigious literary prize.
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