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mimooo's review
5.0
this was a psychological, claustrophobic, wrenching, dreamlike ghost story. it pays off for the engaged reader lol. its big themes— the impossibility of knowing another person, the ghosts of colonialism, self-destruction— lurk below the surface of the plot in recurring motifs: a plaintive wise dog, a dark forest, acts of violence, and a stifling atmosphere of unease. the writing delivers these mysteries and intergenerational hauntings in a startlingly straightforward and unpretentious manner. which is why this book is so uncanny!
random notes:
the children hang on the volatile, flinty, and subtle mood changes of adults in such a painful way.... too real
let the dog in the house! the dog and the some of the rships remind me of the door by magda szabo
it depicts people’s damaged and inward lives and the pain they inflict on each other yet never forecloses their yearning for another way of relating to their loved ones..... pain!!!!!!
it IS all a bit horrors of heterosex-nuclear family-monogamy lol but done well to that end
random notes:
the children hang on the volatile, flinty, and subtle mood changes of adults in such a painful way.... too real
let the dog in the house! the dog and the some of the rships remind me of the door by magda szabo
it depicts people’s damaged and inward lives and the pain they inflict on each other yet never forecloses their yearning for another way of relating to their loved ones..... pain!!!!!!
it IS all a bit horrors of heterosex-nuclear family-monogamy lol but done well to that end
jenni8fer's review against another edition
4.0
Haunting, surreal story. This book explores the psychological makeup of its characters which makes it all the more creepy. We see their social inadequacies, their need to belong, their judgmental nature, their insecurities, their guilt, and shame. All of these things find them running away and thinking of distancing themselves from loved ones. There are tragedies, mysteries, and the supernatural. The first half is good, but the second half is a real page-turner. You as the reader may interpret the events without the author telling you what happened. A teensy bit wordy with the long sentences, but well worth the wading through.
catouch's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
shallihavemydwarf's review
2.0
2.5 stars, I guess.
I started off liking this book quite a bit and ended up not liking it at all. The story seemed so sure of itself at the beginning but went quite off the rails in the second half.
The most grating aspect of Ladivine is that certain characters are referred to throughout by their first and last names together. And when it started, it seemed as if the author were making a point, but by the end I didn't know or care what that point was. Essentially, I feel the same way about the book as a whole.
I started off liking this book quite a bit and ended up not liking it at all. The story seemed so sure of itself at the beginning but went quite off the rails in the second half.
The most grating aspect of Ladivine is that certain characters are referred to throughout by their first and last names together. And when it started, it seemed as if the author were making a point, but by the end I didn't know or care what that point was. Essentially, I feel the same way about the book as a whole.
chublaikhan's review
I don't know! I got into it quickly because I was interested and then I finished it quickly because I wanted it to be over. So much heavy introspection, constant guilt, mother-daughter relationships, more guilt, a dog. Guilt. A bit nightmarish in the middle. Much confused.
lwalla01's review
2.0
2.5 stars. The book devolved quickly for me in a way I didn't appreciate or gleam insight from.
ychichi's review against another edition
5.0
When I started this book I honestly was put off by the writing style with each sentence being 8 lines long.
It's a very strange depressing book about how much of ourselves we choose to show the world and those around us. It's about the complicated relationships we have with our loved ones and explores whether we can ever truly know someone. The loneliness in this book was palpable. Although the writing took some time to get used to I can honestly say this was one of the best books I have ever read and I will think about it for the rest of my life.
I definitely see why this author is so famous. I look forward to reading her other books. However this book certainly isn't for everyone.
It's a very strange depressing book about how much of ourselves we choose to show the world and those around us. It's about the complicated relationships we have with our loved ones and explores whether we can ever truly know someone. The loneliness in this book was palpable. Although the writing took some time to get used to I can honestly say this was one of the best books I have ever read and I will think about it for the rest of my life.
I definitely see why this author is so famous. I look forward to reading her other books. However this book certainly isn't for everyone.
clairewords's review against another edition
3.0
Ladivine, written by the Senegalese-French writer Marie NDiaye, known for her 2009 Prix Goncourt award-winning Trois Femmes Puissantes (Three Strong Women) came to my attention when it was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2016.
The blurb describes it as a novel about a women named Clarisse Rivière, who travels by train once a month to visit her mother Ladivine, a woman neither her husband, daughter or grandchildren, or anyone connected to her present life is aware of. They believe Clarisse, whose real name is Malinka, is an orphan and due to mixed parentage, a father unknown, she bears little resemblance to the mother she is ashamed to acknowledge.
The novel demonstrates this artifice of a life, where Clarisse spends every day trying to remove from her very essence who she really is, and while the result could be seen by some as perhaps attaining some kind of perfection, as a character she is hollow, superficial, not there. What makes it hard to accept or believe, is that there appears to be no reason for this decision, no apparent childhood trauma, no cruelty to have turned her into such a narcissist, except perhaps her isolation from normal family and social norms, being the daughter of a single, working mother who was obviously a foreigner, most likely from an African country.
I admit, I found this novel strange, weird and inhuman. While I understand the author may have been trying to portray something about humanity, what results is the shadow of a human when an aspect of their humanity, their cultural and familial identity, is removed.
As Clarisse, Malinka marries and has a child, who she names Ladivine, a daughter who drifts away from her family, when she moves to Berlin and who senses something missing in herself, but with no way to understand what it might be or how to resolve it. Clarisse's husband Richard leaves her, for perhaps the same reason, again something he can't quite communicate.
Slightly frustrated having finished the novel, which features a dog in various scenes, which may or may not be the incarnation of one of the characters, I decided to read a few interviews to discover what I was missing in understanding this weird novel by an award-winning and highly revered French novelist.
The details about Marie NDiaye's life are telling, as are the common themes in her fiction to date. I'll admit, I find I appreciate the novel more, for having been made aware of this background, to read it without this context, is to feel something this character, that something vital is missing!
Marie NDiaye is the daughter of a French mother and a Senegalese father she barely knows and is married herself to a white Frenchman. She, like the character Clarisse, was raised just south of Paris, and according to an interview in Le Monde, has spent only 3 weeks on the African continent, 2 of those weeks in Senegal, and was said to have felt "wholly foreign" to the continent. For me, this may explain why it feels as though Ladivine, the mother also has no heritage, it is clear she comes from elsewhere, but the author chooses not to provide the narrative any clue to that heritage or cultural reference and even when later in the book, it seems as though the daughter of Clarisse and her family visit that country, though it is never named, again the reader is kept from knowing the actual origins, except through the occasional physical description of the people, reminding us of those opening clues to her mother's physique.
There is an emptiness at the core of the novel, a sad indictment of the policies of some countries in their attempt to assimilate the many cultures into one, a loss of a richness that even when unknown can be exhilarating to explore, which is why I have enjoyed so much the work of writer's like Maryse Condé's Victoire: My Mother's Motherand Yaa Gyasi 's Homegoing who through their stories seek to explore that which they were not exposed to during their childhoods, but which they come to understand more by visiting the places or exploring through storytelling.
The article in the New Republic (linked below) is worth a read for its discussion of comparisons with Gustave Flaubert's 'free indirect discourse' and how NDiaye submerges the reader into the speaker's mind and the role of the element of fantasy, or those aspects that cause the reader to wonder whether what they just read was real or a hallucination or the product of an unreliable narrator.
Overall, an interesting read and an interesting writer and novel to read about, but that lack of a cultural heritage or interest in going there to seek it out and confront it, make me less inclined to want to read more of her work. I would however be interested in what she might come up with, should she decide to research her African roots and risk taking that inner journey that would no doubt enrich her fiction and interest this reader.
Further Reading
The Metamorphoses of Marie NDiaye, New Republic by Jeffrey Zuckerman
3 Generations Of Trauma Haunt 'Ladivine', NPR review by Jean Zimmerman
The blurb describes it as a novel about a women named Clarisse Rivière, who travels by train once a month to visit her mother Ladivine, a woman neither her husband, daughter or grandchildren, or anyone connected to her present life is aware of. They believe Clarisse, whose real name is Malinka, is an orphan and due to mixed parentage, a father unknown, she bears little resemblance to the mother she is ashamed to acknowledge.
The novel demonstrates this artifice of a life, where Clarisse spends every day trying to remove from her very essence who she really is, and while the result could be seen by some as perhaps attaining some kind of perfection, as a character she is hollow, superficial, not there. What makes it hard to accept or believe, is that there appears to be no reason for this decision, no apparent childhood trauma, no cruelty to have turned her into such a narcissist, except perhaps her isolation from normal family and social norms, being the daughter of a single, working mother who was obviously a foreigner, most likely from an African country.
"She kissed her mother, who was short, thin, prettily built, who like her had slender bones, narrow shoulders, long, thin arms, and compact, unobtrusive features, perfectly attractive but discreet, almost invisible.
Where Malinka's mother was born, a place Clarisse Rivière had never gone and would never go - though she had, furtive and uneasy, looked at pictures of it on the Internet - everyone had those same delicate features, harmoniously placed on their faces as if with an eye for coherence, and those same long arms, nearly as slender at the shoulder, as at the wrist.
And the fact that her mother had therefore inherited those traits from a long, extensive ancestry and then passed them on to her daughter (the features, the arms, the slender frame and, thank God, nothing more) once made Clarisse Rivière dizzy with anger, because how could you escape when you were marked in this way, how could you claim not to be what you did not want to be, what you nevertheless had every right not to want to be?"
I admit, I found this novel strange, weird and inhuman. While I understand the author may have been trying to portray something about humanity, what results is the shadow of a human when an aspect of their humanity, their cultural and familial identity, is removed.
"And another realisation hit her at the same time, with the violence of a thing long known but never quite grasped, now abruptly revealed in all its simplicity: being that woman's daughter filled her with a horrible shame and fear."
As Clarisse, Malinka marries and has a child, who she names Ladivine, a daughter who drifts away from her family, when she moves to Berlin and who senses something missing in herself, but with no way to understand what it might be or how to resolve it. Clarisse's husband Richard leaves her, for perhaps the same reason, again something he can't quite communicate.
Slightly frustrated having finished the novel, which features a dog in various scenes, which may or may not be the incarnation of one of the characters, I decided to read a few interviews to discover what I was missing in understanding this weird novel by an award-winning and highly revered French novelist.
The details about Marie NDiaye's life are telling, as are the common themes in her fiction to date. I'll admit, I find I appreciate the novel more, for having been made aware of this background, to read it without this context, is to feel something this character, that something vital is missing!
Marie NDiaye is the daughter of a French mother and a Senegalese father she barely knows and is married herself to a white Frenchman. She, like the character Clarisse, was raised just south of Paris, and according to an interview in Le Monde, has spent only 3 weeks on the African continent, 2 of those weeks in Senegal, and was said to have felt "wholly foreign" to the continent. For me, this may explain why it feels as though Ladivine, the mother also has no heritage, it is clear she comes from elsewhere, but the author chooses not to provide the narrative any clue to that heritage or cultural reference and even when later in the book, it seems as though the daughter of Clarisse and her family visit that country, though it is never named, again the reader is kept from knowing the actual origins, except through the occasional physical description of the people, reminding us of those opening clues to her mother's physique.
"NDiaye’s novels frequently feature biracial couples, absent or distant fathers, and strained filial relationships. Her characters often feel ill at ease within their communities, and struggle with doubts that they are not who they believe or wish themselves to be." New Republic, The Metamorphoses of Marie NDiaye by Jeffrey Zuckerman
There is an emptiness at the core of the novel, a sad indictment of the policies of some countries in their attempt to assimilate the many cultures into one, a loss of a richness that even when unknown can be exhilarating to explore, which is why I have enjoyed so much the work of writer's like Maryse Condé's Victoire: My Mother's Motherand Yaa Gyasi 's Homegoing who through their stories seek to explore that which they were not exposed to during their childhoods, but which they come to understand more by visiting the places or exploring through storytelling.
The article in the New Republic (linked below) is worth a read for its discussion of comparisons with Gustave Flaubert's 'free indirect discourse' and how NDiaye submerges the reader into the speaker's mind and the role of the element of fantasy, or those aspects that cause the reader to wonder whether what they just read was real or a hallucination or the product of an unreliable narrator.
Overall, an interesting read and an interesting writer and novel to read about, but that lack of a cultural heritage or interest in going there to seek it out and confront it, make me less inclined to want to read more of her work. I would however be interested in what she might come up with, should she decide to research her African roots and risk taking that inner journey that would no doubt enrich her fiction and interest this reader.
Further Reading
The Metamorphoses of Marie NDiaye, New Republic by Jeffrey Zuckerman
3 Generations Of Trauma Haunt 'Ladivine', NPR review by Jean Zimmerman
elliemccabe's review
2.0
The disparate parts of this novel, really did not come together for me and just left me feeling confused. Perhaps exacerbated by the audiobook, but it kept repeating and then something shocking would happen and I was left asking what did I miss. Also I just did not understand the dog metaphor.
aditurbo's review
1.0
I can't stand the writing style in this book - so cold and alienated. The plot, not that much of it exists, is pretty unbelievable, and the characters are all cardboard - they are nothing like real people. It feels like the writer was trying too hard to come out as sophisticated and deep, while in reality she had a very thin story which she found difficult to breathe life into.