This existential classic from 1940, focusing on a woman’s state of mind after she has a secret liaison, might be the most French novel I’ve ever read
On holiday in the south of France, a Parisian woman, Marie, devotedly in love with her husband of six years, Jean, meets a younger man, also on holiday. She seeks him out on a solitary walk, and finds him; he tries to force himself on her, and she rebuffs him; he gives her his phone number in Paris. When she gets back from the holiday, her husband has to go away on business for three days, which makes her weep; but after she has seen him off, she calls the number ...
Marie, originally titled A la Recherche de Marie, in conscious homage to Marcel Proust, was written in 1940; but with Paris occupied by the Germans, it took three years for Madeleine Bourdouxhe to find a publisher she was happy with – that is, one uncontaminated by fascism. (The publisher, perhaps surprisingly given the year, was in her native Brussels.)
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