No Touching
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
A MOVING STORY OF LIBERATION THAT SHATTERS TIRED PREJUDICES ABOUT WOMANHOOD, SEX AND SOCIETY
Josephine teaches in a high school in a suburb of Paris. Her life is a balancing act between Xanax and Tupperware lunches in the staff room until she walks into a Champs-Elysée's strip club.
There she learns a secret nocturnal code of conduct; she discovers camaraderie and the joys of female company, and she thrills at the sensation of men's desire directed toward her. Josephine, a teacher by day, begins to lead a secret existence by night that ultimately allows her to regain control of her life. This delicate balance is shattered one evening by an unexpected visitor to the club where she dances.
A heartrending reflection on a woman's image of herself, and the way others see her, Ketty Rouf's extraordinary debut novel No Touching won the prestigious French literary prize Prix du Premier Roman 2020 (First Novel award)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rouf's fresh debut follows a woman pushing her boundaries in order to gain a sense of agency. Joséphine, a depressed, unfulfilled 30-year-old philosophy teacher in a subpar high school in the Parisian suburban of Drancy, finds her requests for a transfer eternally ignored. "Every year I feel like I'm acting in the same movie—or perhaps I should say the same scene is playing me," she thinks. She copes by taking Xanax, and when she can't sleep, she routinely goes to a strip club to drink a bottle of champagne. Then, after taking a pole-dancing course, she begins dancing at one of the clubs as Rose Lee, and her dreams of dancing in high-heeled stilettos, making lots of money, and exploring her newfound sense of power animate her dreary days spent teaching. She becomes close with Fleur, another dancer, and their relationship lingers on the edges of intimacy. After her Rose Lee persona and her identity as a teacher collide, she's forced to consider her next move. While the story is a bit wispy, the direct and infectious prose convincingly delves into Joséphine's inner life as she seeks self-reliance on her own terms. It's a rich character study, but don't come looking for plot.
