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Indlæser... With the Animalsaf Noëlle Revaz
Indlæser...
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Tilhører ForlagsserienGallimard, Folio (4963)
Considered the standard-bearer for the great Franco-Swiss literary tradition, exemplified by authors such as Jacques Chessex and C. F. Ramuz, No'lle Revaz may also remind English-language readers of Louis-Ferdinand C'line: "With the Animals," her shocking debut, is a novel of mud and blood whose linguistic audaciousness is matched only by its brutality, misanthropy, and gallows humor. Narrated by the singular Paul--a violent, narrowminded farmer whose unceasing labor leaves him with more love for his livestock than his family--"With the Animals" is at once a fantastically exaggerated and entirely honest portrait of masculinity gone mad. With his mute and detested wife and children huddled at his side, Paul is only roused from his regimen of hard labor and casual cruelty when a farmhand, Georges, comes to work on his property for the summer. His sovereignty seemingly threatened, an element of unwanted humanity now injected into his universe, Paul's little kingdom seems ripe at last for a revolution. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)843.92Literature French French fiction Modern Period 21st CenturyLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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Such is Paul's relationship to his metonym of a wife. His physically and sexually abusive relationship to her is complicated by two potentially life-altering situations. The first, the arrival of the summer's farmhand (or intern), Jorge--immediately renamed "Georges" by Paul--and second, the discovery that Vulva has cancer. Georges is a former medical student who fancies himself an expert of female nature. He undertakes to soften Paul, to humanize "Vulvia" (Georges' accent). When Vulva leaves the farm for the hospital to receive radiation treatment, Georges finds himself alone with Paul, in other words, alone with the animals.
SPOILER (or at least this reader's speculation):
It seems to me this would make an incredibly disturbing horror film in the vein of "students get more than they bargain for when they study abroad." Vulva is essentially kidnapped, raped and impregnated against her will (over and over). Her physical and social isolation prolong the abuse. When Jorge arrives, he seems to understand her situation and endeavors to rescue her. This attempt is successful so long as Vulva remains in hospital, but alas, Georges' tenure at the farm comes up in September, and Vulva once again finds herself vulnerable and unprotected. She's survived only to endure further abuse. But does she? Curious whether other readers speculated that Vulva was responsible for the outbreak of illness that decimates the farm? Was Paul's mother responsible for the illness that nearly destroyed it years before Vulva's arrival? What to make of this: "That time on the farm, long before Georges ever set foot on it, after the fridge broke down, after that meat gave us the big stomach upset, Vulva never felt a thing in her bacon and ate by herself alone at the table that night with a smile on her mug just like we was all there"? ( )