Staff Pick
Though this book is titled after its ravenous female leads, it is haunted by the male gaze. Always lurking, it is almost a character unto itself, an inescapable force that controls, compels, and creates. Eléonore, Laura, and Inès act as sirens performing for an unseen audience — they are simultaneously larger than life and no bigger than the range of a telescope. Intense, darkly erotic, and sinister, The Governesses is a story reminiscent of overripe fruit: lush and decayed. Recommended By Lauren P., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
The sensational US debut of a major French writer―an intense, delicious meringue of a novella
In a large country house shut off from the world by a gated garden, three young governesses responsible for the education of a group of little boys are preparing a party. The governesses, however, seem to spend more time running around in a state of frenzied desire than attending to the children’s education. One of their main activities is lying in wait for any passing stranger, and then throwing themselves on him like drunken Maenads. The rest of the time they drift about in a kind of sated, melancholy calm, spied upon by an old man in the house opposite, who watches their goings-on through a telescope. As they hang paper lanterns and prepare for the ball in their own honor, and in honor of the little boys rolling hoops on the lawn, much is mysterious: one reviewer wrote of the book’s “deceptively simple words and phrasing, the transparency of which works like a mirror reflecting back on the reader.”
Written with the elegance of old French fables, the dark sensuality of Djuna Barnes and the subtle comedy of Robert Walser, this semi-deranged erotic fairy tale introduces American readers to the marvelous Anne Serre.
Synopsis
In a large country house shut off from the world by a gated garden, three young governesses responsible for the education of a group of little boys are preparing a party. The governesses, however, seem to spend more time running around in a state of frenzied desire than attending to the children's education. One of their main activities is lying in wait for any passing stranger, and then throwing themselves on him like drunken Maenads. The rest of the time they drift about in a kind of sated, melancholy calm, spied upon by an old man in the house opposite, who watches their goings-on through a telescope. As they hang paper lanterns and prepare for the ball in their own honor, and in honor of the little boys rolling hoops on the lawn, much is mysterious: one reviewer wrote of the book's "deceptively simple words and phrasing, the transparency of which works like a mirror reflecting back on the reader."
Written with the elegance of old French fables, the dark sensuality of Djuna Barnes and the subtle comedy of Robert Walser, this semi-deranged erotic fairy tale introduces American readers to the marvelous Anne Serre.
About the Author
Anne Serre was born in 1960, her first novel, Les Gouvernantes, was published in 1992, and praised by Michel Crépu in La Croix for its “remarkable economy of style.” She is the author of fourteen novels and short fictions, and the recipient of a 2008 Cino del Duca Foundation award.