No Touching
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Prix du Premier Roman 2020
A story of liberation and a heartrending portrayal of a woman’s sense of self, Ketty Rouf’s extraordinary debut shatters tired prejudices about sex, women, and society.
Josephine teaches philosophy in a high school in Drancy, a suburb of Paris. Her life is a balancing act between Xanax, Propranolol and Tupperware lunches in the staff room. The directives of the National Education Board are increasingly absurd and intolerable and she follows them with playfulness at times and derision at others.
When, one evening, Josephine walks into a strip club on the Champs-Elysée, her life is completely overturned. 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.
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.
