RaveThe Times Literary SupplementOne might well wonder how such a life could serve a full-length biography, aimed at a mainstream readership ... Against the odds Edmonds has pulled it off, and few could be better suited to the task ... He writes stylishly, with a light touch. The book is packed with anecdotes that leaven the discussion of Parfit’s weighty professional output.
Emmanuel Carrère, tr. John Lambert
PositiveThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)... it is a tour de force. ... The book’s five unequal parts correspond, in roughly chronological order, to the salient storylines in Carrère’s life over the ensuing four years. Each part is divided into short sections, flagged with variously amusing, intriguing or dramatic subtitles. The effect is of an intelligent restlessness ... That the author manages to do all this over 400 pages without boring his reader one bit is testimony to his skill. The consistent vitality of Carrère’s writing places him streets ahead of Karl Ove Knausgaard, with whom he is often compared ... Herein lies the key to his success: Carrère does not confuse subjectivity with privacy, and when his thoughts lead him to interesting places, we follow him there ... Avoiding even a hint of the misery memoir, Carrère eschews clichés by quoting, instead, the formulations of his doctors ... The section describing Carrère’s visit to Leros is the weakest.
Vanessa Springora, tr. Natasha Lehrer
MixedThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)Springora’s account can be regarded as an act of testimony; as such, it is an important addition to the ever-growing documentation, mainly provided by women, of sexually abusive behaviour on the part of powerful men ... I find her lack of curiosity about earlier [sexual] political battles disappointing ... Of course, the politics and the theories of 1970s France are not Springora’s primary concern, and her excursion into this territory is tangential. For the most part, Le Consentement is composed as a work of literature; it is the story of the sexual exploitation of a vulnerable adolescent girl by a narcissistic monster. Although the story happens to be true, its truth does not exhaust its value ... The book’s self-presentation as a work of literature leaves Springora’s reader uncertain about what she is entitled to ask or expect. The aesthetic gain is apparent: un récit magnifique. On the other hand, Vanessa Springora’s decision to place actual events in a novelistic form sometimes feels too convenient, a strategy for avoiding a deeper, more critical engagement with the culture in which she grew up, and which made her book possible.
