“I am an ordinary woman, a woman you could encounter anywhere.” Yet this average woman is anything but. Her friends, parents, and family doctor all insist that they know her better than anyone else, yet each seems to contradict the other. Her first husband, for example, considers her to be frigid, contrary to her lover, who engages in sexual trysts with her on a regular basis in the restrooms of Paris’ chicest cafés. Her beautician is convinced that she is living with a sexual deviant. “If she wants her pubic hair tweezed each time she visits, it must be because her man is the kind of guy who lurks around school playgrounds!”
Idolized by her son, envied by her sister, adored by her Romanian housekeeper and insignificant in the eyes of her banker, the identity of this so-called average woman is constructed and deconstructed through the not always loving testimonies of her family, her representatives and her closest friends. In doing so, they draw a confused but nevertheless likeable portrait of a thirty-four year old urbanite working in advertising whose emotional life is relatively normal in its complexity.
This entertaining and original novel is written in a style that is at once sharp, humorous, subtle and restrained. Enhanced by drawings, documents and photographs, its imaginative scope confirms the diversity of this up-and-coming new author’s talents.