Ladivine
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- 3,99 €
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- 3,99 €
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2016
Clarisse Rivière's life is shaped by a refusal to admit to her husband Richard and to her daughter Ladivine that her mother is a poor black housekeeper. Instead, weighed down by guilt, she pretends to be an orphan, visiting her mother in secret and telling no-one of her real identity as Malinka, daughter of Ladivine Sylla.
In time, her lies turn against her. Richard leaves Clarisse, frustrated by the unbridgeable, indecipherable gulf between them. Clarisse is devastated, but finds solace in a new man, Freddy Moliger, who is let into the secret about her mother, and is even introduced to her.
But Ladivine, her daughter, who is now married herself, cannot shake a bad feeling about her mother's new lover, convinced that he can bring only chaos and pain into her life. When she is proved right, in the most tragic circumstances, the only comfort the family can turn to requires a leap of faith beyond any they could have imagined.
Centred around three generations of women, whose seemingly cursed lineage is defined by the weight of origins, the pain of alienation and the legacy of shame, Ladivine is a beguiling story of secrets, lies, guilt and forgiveness by one of Europe's most unique literary voices.
Translated from the French by Jordan Stump
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sadness, regret, and insidious dread permeate every page of this beautifully crafted, relentless novel. NDiaye's (All My Friends) story chronicles a curse handed down from mother to daughter. Ladivine, a woman of mysterious origin, raises a daughter, Malinka, in France. A haughty child who has never known her father, Malinka begins to refer to her mother simply as "the servant" and eventually leaves home. She makes a new life for herself as Clarisse, and though she travels once a month to visit Ladivine in Bordeaux, she coldheartedly reveals not a single detail of her new life, not even about her husband, Richard, or that she has a daughter, also named Ladivine. But the vacant Clarisse must pay for her coldness. Richard leaves Clarisse, and years later, when Clarisse decides to go back to being Malinka perhaps her true self murderous consequences ensue after she shares the truth about her past with a sinister new boyfriend. Terrible, eerie things happen to the younger Ladivine when she goes on holiday with her own husband and two children, to a foreign (and unspecified) land that NDiaye hints may be the place where her namesake was born. Most unsettling is that people in this hot, poor country seem to believe they have seen Ladivine before, that indeed they know her. A familial strain of darkness runs through the lives of these women, and they must atone. Themes concerning race, as well as supernatural forces, sometimes canine in form, always lurk nearby in this tale.
