A review by uncleflannery
La Bâtarde by Simone de Beauvoir, Derek Coltman, Violette Leduc

5.0

The first half of this book is one of the most beautiful and textured accounts of childhood I've ever read, the second half suffers because the personal traumas are so abstract, I don't know why she's crying, there's a "quest for elegance" that follows our narrator through different dept. stores looking for a blouse, a woman screams "I'd kill myself if I had a face like yours!" (I liked that part though.) Still: beautiful, funny, vivid, occasionally pretentious biography of a woman who spent the first forty years of her life just hanging out before becoming a writer. My kinda gal!