Book author: Marie NDiaye

Ladivine is a wonderful, difficult novel that casts a heavy oppressive weight on the reader. Every character moves through a fog of disappointment brought on by shame.

The daughter of Ladivine, Malinka, cuts her mother out of her life in order to be free of her mother’s shameful heritage. A lowly, unassuming woman with no ambition but to live side by side with her daughter, Malinka thinks of Ladivine as ‘the servant’. Though she has her mother’s bone structure, Malinka is not dark skinned. She believes her life will be freer, more fulfilled, if she keeps her mother at arm’s length. She meets Richard Rivière, becomes Clarisse Rivière, and tells Richard her parents are dead. Continue reading Ladivine by Marie NDiaye

Three Strong Women, though not always easy to read, is a wonderful novel: psychologically rich, surprising in structure and choice of perspective, experimental and challenging. You could open the book expecting a straightforward narrative about three women and though you do indeed read in detail about three women’s lives, it’s not always in the ways you might expect.

Norah has struggled to forge a life for herself in Paris despite being abandoned by her rich father who left her and her mother and sister when they were small. He went back to Senegal taking, without any discussion, their little brother with him.

Now a lawyer and a parent, the novel follows her return to Dakar in response to her father’s call for help. She is shown to her brother’s room. Where is he? Where is her father’s most recent wife? Why is the house so quiet? Continue reading Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye