A review by aesopsdaddy
Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet

3.0

It’s Pride month which means gay Classic time. Genet’s novel is a piece of prison literature; its self-reflexive story told from the perspective of an incarcerated Jean, freely/fluidly floating from character to imagined character, including: a pimp (Darling), a murderer (the titular Lady) and a drag queen (Divine), who takes up the majority of the limelight. The book contains some of the most lyrically beautiful writing I’ve ever read, and I did enjoy the portrait of the queer Parisian underworld, the high camp aesthetic and its Rabelaisian register. Nevertheless…Sartre called this an “epic of masturbation” and, accordingly, I found the rambling, self-indulgent, onanistic style to detract from my own pleasure. It’s plunged me into a bit of a reading slump to be honest.