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airamavitok's review against another edition
5.0
I honestly liked it. Not because i am a psycho or whatever but because through its "non real" warning, it actually shows a reality. You people think that these things couldnt possible be real? Or hadnt been real? There are so many places in the world that women are oppressed and used as sexual tools. Their lives dont matter at all and men have the upper hand. Yes this world written in the book exists. Maybe not exactly like that, maybe EXACTLY like that or even worse. We will never know. And our "logic" make us see it as it is shown to be' a fantastic sadistic world. But i personally doupt its that simple. For these reasons, from my perspective its a great book, since it does show reality in its cruelest form.
paperbird's review against another edition
1.0
Here's a book I was eager to read -- A Sentimental Novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet. I geeked out on all the nouveau romanists back in college. I remember sitting on a parking lot reading Jealousy, and an ant bit me on the balls. Now here's this last work by Robbe-Grillet, published a year before he died. It came out in France wrapped in its own condom, the publisher seems proud to report. Wouldn't want any young impressionable minds flipping through this and having their eyeballs pop out.
Because it's basically pornography? The Marquis de Sade is alive and well? But this was published by Dalkey Archive, and the back flap says "French Literature"... Even has a pseudo-scholarly introduction by the translator going off on what a treat it is to see Robbe-Grillet apply his scientific style to his actual sexual fantasies. Golden stuff he's been hoarding to himself since he was 12 years old, apparently. Wow. Some real nuggets we're dealing with.
Did this book really cause that much controversy when it came out in France? I don't remember hearing anything about it in America. Something like this came out last century, though, folks would get arrested. Now I could read this openly in my favorite Vietnamese restaurant while eating pho and the only provocative thing would be the sound of hot girls squeezing rooster sauce and making that wet shitty sound.
I can't consider this a major work because it goes against everything Robbe-Grillet fought to destroy, despite what the translator says in the intro. That is, the preference to name only certain things and depict a reality vs arriving at the truth by coldly listing facts and cataloging objects with no favoritism toward any event.
Writing porn requires that you curate a specific set of details to hopefully convey the maximum erotic impact, which since that's what Robbe-Grillet is doing here, makes me feel like he sold out to his own primal animal. Which leaves us to judge the work based on the strength of its eroticism which while subjective still requires some kind of underlying craft to "pull off" successfully, pun intended.
How does he do as a more traditional storyteller? The writing is impeccable, as expected. It's the dynamics between the characters where I feel he fails. Most good porn the heroine undergoes a transformation / degradation / awakening (and sometimes empowerment) of pussy-consciousness, the more 180 from start to finish the better. In this story the heroine at the start is already mostly on board with the father / daughter incest / BDSM program. Her lack of resistance, her eagerness to please, makes me feel like we're missing a couple of juicy "fight" chapters.
This leads the role of resistance to a cast of secondary characters we don't really care about, they're so disposable, it just becomes a slaughterfest and you're left feeling as if you were just tested on how much you can stomach. I did however enjoy the conceit of girls found guilty and subjected to arrest and rape by the police, then sexual servitude / torture / death, because of the "crime" of being too beautiful.
As far as this being "literature"... By setting all this down, he probably didn't realize how big an arena he was entering and how he could do battle with the inherent enemies of morality and social mores in an interesting way, and so became immediately "dated" as someone two or three steps behind and falling back farther the less prudish / more jaded the world gets. (His solution is to throw spears at everyone, which speaks to how threatened he probably felt, as this was his way of balancing or getting some power back. I could be wrong about this.)
At the very least this could be regarded as an artifact for case study of a brilliant 20th century novelist. The richness of detail makes me wonder if there was a dearth of pornographic materials when the author was a kid. Conversely, does anyone nowadays have sexual fantasies this ornate, or even at all, when any variety of porn is just taps away?
Why couldn't he just leave his oeuvre the hell alone? Claude Simon did, Nathalie Sarraute did. I have to conclude that like any old exhibitionist about to die, he just wanted attention.
Because it's basically pornography? The Marquis de Sade is alive and well? But this was published by Dalkey Archive, and the back flap says "French Literature"... Even has a pseudo-scholarly introduction by the translator going off on what a treat it is to see Robbe-Grillet apply his scientific style to his actual sexual fantasies. Golden stuff he's been hoarding to himself since he was 12 years old, apparently. Wow. Some real nuggets we're dealing with.
Did this book really cause that much controversy when it came out in France? I don't remember hearing anything about it in America. Something like this came out last century, though, folks would get arrested. Now I could read this openly in my favorite Vietnamese restaurant while eating pho and the only provocative thing would be the sound of hot girls squeezing rooster sauce and making that wet shitty sound.
I can't consider this a major work because it goes against everything Robbe-Grillet fought to destroy, despite what the translator says in the intro. That is, the preference to name only certain things and depict a reality vs arriving at the truth by coldly listing facts and cataloging objects with no favoritism toward any event.
Writing porn requires that you curate a specific set of details to hopefully convey the maximum erotic impact, which since that's what Robbe-Grillet is doing here, makes me feel like he sold out to his own primal animal. Which leaves us to judge the work based on the strength of its eroticism which while subjective still requires some kind of underlying craft to "pull off" successfully, pun intended.
How does he do as a more traditional storyteller? The writing is impeccable, as expected. It's the dynamics between the characters where I feel he fails. Most good porn the heroine undergoes a transformation / degradation / awakening (and sometimes empowerment) of pussy-consciousness, the more 180 from start to finish the better. In this story the heroine at the start is already mostly on board with the father / daughter incest / BDSM program. Her lack of resistance, her eagerness to please, makes me feel like we're missing a couple of juicy "fight" chapters.
This leads the role of resistance to a cast of secondary characters we don't really care about, they're so disposable, it just becomes a slaughterfest and you're left feeling as if you were just tested on how much you can stomach. I did however enjoy the conceit of girls found guilty and subjected to arrest and rape by the police, then sexual servitude / torture / death, because of the "crime" of being too beautiful.
As far as this being "literature"... By setting all this down, he probably didn't realize how big an arena he was entering and how he could do battle with the inherent enemies of morality and social mores in an interesting way, and so became immediately "dated" as someone two or three steps behind and falling back farther the less prudish / more jaded the world gets. (His solution is to throw spears at everyone, which speaks to how threatened he probably felt, as this was his way of balancing or getting some power back. I could be wrong about this.)
At the very least this could be regarded as an artifact for case study of a brilliant 20th century novelist. The richness of detail makes me wonder if there was a dearth of pornographic materials when the author was a kid. Conversely, does anyone nowadays have sexual fantasies this ornate, or even at all, when any variety of porn is just taps away?
Why couldn't he just leave his oeuvre the hell alone? Claude Simon did, Nathalie Sarraute did. I have to conclude that like any old exhibitionist about to die, he just wanted attention.
mychekhov's review against another edition
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.75
"Where is the merit? Why does it exist?"
If you want to read dark anti-traditional tales of erotic excess that apply peroxide-soaked bandages of philosophy in intervals as it flagellates you quite mercilessly, whispering sweet nothings in its veneration of crime and the absolute necessity and sublimity of Evil, you ought to head elsewhere, since you'll likely have the rest of the French avant-garde canon to act as your personal physician and masseuse. Here, you are left in the care of a much more brutal, less-hermaphroditic beast, though his technique is every bit as poetic as his predecessors. There is merit: The prose is superb. And there is that delightful pressure point found in its oblation of lesbian sadomasochism (small snapshots, like polaroids) left for both the reader and the novel's young subjects to explore—a contagion of sexual despotism spreading concentrically from progenitor to offspring, heredity sowing the seeds of transgression inducing the cure 'justifying the means' by some sort of blissfully deranged incident of indecency that began as nothing more than an aging writer's masturbatory fantasies concerning the bestialisation of pubescent girls refined over decades until released to printed press much like one final ejaculatory huzzah at the whole world before succumbing to metaphoric limpness and the physical tomb. And we will know the spell has served its purpose when those nymphets hailing from reality whose very likeliness is shackled and quartered and gynebutchered in these fantasies are prescribed the novel and discover tucked away underneath the bloodsoaked covers of its dreamy text the merit so many of us have missed. Like Isidore Ducasse and De Sade both wrote of their œuvre, nothing here is impermissible for a 14 year-old girl to read.
If you want to read dark anti-traditional tales of erotic excess that apply peroxide-soaked bandages of philosophy in intervals as it flagellates you quite mercilessly, whispering sweet nothings in its veneration of crime and the absolute necessity and sublimity of Evil, you ought to head elsewhere, since you'll likely have the rest of the French avant-garde canon to act as your personal physician and masseuse. Here, you are left in the care of a much more brutal, less-hermaphroditic beast, though his technique is every bit as poetic as his predecessors. There is merit: The prose is superb. And there is that delightful pressure point found in its oblation of lesbian sadomasochism (small snapshots, like polaroids) left for both the reader and the novel's young subjects to explore—a contagion of sexual despotism spreading concentrically from progenitor to offspring, heredity sowing the seeds of transgression inducing the cure 'justifying the means' by some sort of blissfully deranged incident of indecency that began as nothing more than an aging writer's masturbatory fantasies concerning the bestialisation of pubescent girls refined over decades until released to printed press much like one final ejaculatory huzzah at the whole world before succumbing to metaphoric limpness and the physical tomb. And we will know the spell has served its purpose when those nymphets hailing from reality whose very likeliness is shackled and quartered and gynebutchered in these fantasies are prescribed the novel and discover tucked away underneath the bloodsoaked covers of its dreamy text the merit so many of us have missed. Like Isidore Ducasse and De Sade both wrote of their œuvre, nothing here is impermissible for a 14 year-old girl to read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Incest, Rape, Sexual violence, Slavery, and Torture
sunnybopeep's review against another edition
2.75
Everyone gets all high and mighty about French erotica, but I bet they’ve never read this before. Anne Rice WHO? I only know Alain Robbe-Grillet. There’s a reason this book was originally sold shrink-wrapped.
This is just a scary, bloody porn book about a man who has the most intensely incestual relationship with his daughter. They get into a bunch of shenanigans, except all of the shenanigans involve watching teenage girls getting burned or beaten or boinked. There’s some peeing, and… a lot of… other stuff I can’t describe. 😐
Actually, I could tell that there was something more substantial lurking under the endless descriptions of sexual torture, but I’m not going to analyze it here because I don’t think anyone should read this. Even so, I can’t pretend like there weren’t moments of intense irony bordering on satire. I did find myself enjoying it at times, and the book was written in a cold, exacting way that made it easier for the reader to disassociate… “Putting Sade back on the bookshelf,” huh…? Yeah, sure… I don’t really think there is enough thoughtful substance for most people to find value in trudging through all the traumatic scenes involving babies.
This book… made me feel nauseous… I need to go pray to God or something…
neeeem's review against another edition
4.0
ending is boring
everything else is disgustingly intriguing
everything else is disgustingly intriguing
schumacher's review against another edition
3.0
Sade worship made dreamy in a way that only Robbe-Grillet could. Don't read this on the train. You'll be institutionalized.
mhlynch's review against another edition
4.0
A well written novel about an alternate world in which the extremes of sado-masochistic torture are as everyday as oatmeal. Does the novel glorify the torture of underage nymphets with all the characterization of a lamp? Maybe! Nevertheless, might there be something to be said about the horrors (or sexual fantasies) abounding throughout the author's mind, displayed with such tender detail and amoral language? Yeah, maybe, probably. In the end, it's well written.