A review by raulbime
Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet
3.0
There are two kinds of novels that I have read so far. The ones that engage the reader from the onset, normally the reader is made fully aware of what's going on (unless there's a mystery or a lead to a denouement) and feels that he/she can trust the narrator (note that the narrator in this instance is the voice in and/or of the story and not necessarily the kind from an audio book) to guide him/her through the story. Then there's the kind of novels that immerse the reader in a sort of strange world created by the writer from the first and the narrator could not care less for his/her reader or their attention spans or their frustrations, going from one time span to the other and from the thoughts of one character to the other without warning or regard.
Our Lady of Flowers falls in the second category, Genet who wrote the story while in prison tells the story of Divine, Darling, Our Lady and various other characters (including himself) in what was the underground scene ,if it may be called so, of 1940s Paris with crooks, drag queens, thieves and murderers.
This book was brilliantly done but as much as I appreciated Genet's imagination and his ability to (re)make a dark vengeful but sweet sort of world with precision and ease, the frustration I faced due to structure and intentional lapses didn't seem worthwhile for my reading experience.
Our Lady of Flowers falls in the second category, Genet who wrote the story while in prison tells the story of Divine, Darling, Our Lady and various other characters (including himself) in what was the underground scene ,if it may be called so, of 1940s Paris with crooks, drag queens, thieves and murderers.
This book was brilliantly done but as much as I appreciated Genet's imagination and his ability to (re)make a dark vengeful but sweet sort of world with precision and ease, the frustration I faced due to structure and intentional lapses didn't seem worthwhile for my reading experience.