Reviews

I wish I had something intelligent to say about this book, but I really don’t.

I guess it could be regarded as refreshing to have men’s bodies described in a way as if they’re just objects, like is often seen with women. The protagonist really is just fainting (pretending to faint?) to get men to help her and lead them to hotels in order get a good look at their penis and store it in her mind... However, I’m not entirely sure if trying to even the score of objectification is what we need? So I’m definitely not sure if that’s what the book was trying to do.

A book about a woman who just unapologetically enjoys sex and does so with random consenting men would be fun, however none of this comes across as like she even really enjoys these sexual encounters.

The book has quite an unusual narration style , and there were lots of metaphors in metaphors and rambling disconnected phrases… it was hard for me to follow. I didn’t really know what was going on beyond she met a lot of dick, bought sex toys and watched porn. And didn't seem to have that much fun doing so?

The protagonist is disconnected from her life and the narrator keeps us disconnected from her. We never get to know her or fully understand her motives.

No idea what happened at the end.

There’s also a potentially underage boy involved sexually with her, which obviously isn’t ok and I don’t understand this book enough to know why this choice was made.

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3.5

At one time, she looked for her alter ego in novels and sometimes thought she had found her there. She trawled through books that staged the sexual life of female characters. She read enthusiastic reviews recommending these texts, presenting them like so many maps of the Dark Continent, results of previously unpublished explorations that have, finally brought long-closeted mysteries of female desire and pleasure to light. They promised far more than a novel: they promised truth.
Jeanne plunged herself into these books. In each new text, she hoped to find what the previous had lacked. But the same pattern was invariably deployed.”

I’ll admit I picked up the English edition of The Collection by Nina Leger from Granta, featuring a debut translation by Laura Francis, because of the amusing mushroom cover designed by Jo Walker. An award-winning paean to pleasure and the penis this short French book engulfs readers in the sensual activities and imaginative inner palace of Jeanne. A woman whose casual sexual lifestyle refreshingly resists being ascribed a box or any pathology for that matter.

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