Pretty Things
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A pulpy tale of mismatched twins struggling to embody the perfect woman: "Effortlessly cool and slyly spiky, Despentes probes the dynamics of fame, beauty, and female competition, putting her finger on the pulse of what it’s like to wear the daily drag of femininity—and then pressing down, slowly and calmly, right where it hurts" (Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine).
Claudine has always been pretty and Pauline has always been ugly. But when Claudine wants to become famous, she convinces gloomy Pauline—with her angelic voice—to pretend they’re the same person. Yet just as things take off, Claudine commits suicide.
Pauline hatches a new scheme, pulling on her dead sister’s identity, inhabiting her apartment, and reading her mail. As the impersonation continues, Pauline slowly realizes that the cost of femininity is to dazzle on the outside while rotting away on the inside—and that womanhood is what ultimately killed her sister.
"It’s pulp in every sense: propulsively readable, violent, sexy, with all the satisfaction of an inevitable ending. And yet it’s also a feminist parable, blunt and unrelenting in its wrath, and it feels as fresh now as it would have ten years ago." —The Paris Review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Despentes, a French author best known stateside for her feminist theory memoir King Kong Theory, delivers a forceful, visceral novel about femininity, violence, and personhood. It opens with Claudine, who is flashy, crude, and ambitious, and is willing to use her beauty and sexuality to achieve fame as a singer. Unfortunately, she has none of the talent to back it up. Enter her contemptuous twin, Pauline, who takes no interest in her appearance and looks like the sensual Claudine but who has the voice Claudine needs. They have a fraught relationship, stemming from a childhood with abusive parents who introduced and then encouraged division between the two. Pauline's boyfriend is in jail and her regular life is on hold, and so she has come to Paris. Soon after her arrival, Claudine commits suicide, and Pauline decides to lie about her identity, slipping into her sister's life. What follows is a downward slide into the trap of femininity and beauty, which Pauline has rejected for as long as her sister has embraced it. As she falls further into her ruse, Pauline thinks, "I would have preferred not to know what I really am," but perhaps who she becomes is less a reflection of her than it is of the male desires that have shaped her. Despentes's novel is chilling and wonderful, coolly presenting the raw, jagged edge of womanhood.
