{"id":6702,"date":"2016-12-12T06:46:55","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T06:46:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6702"},"modified":"2016-12-15T11:43:31","modified_gmt":"2016-12-15T11:43:31","slug":"ladivine-by-marie-ndiaye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6702","title":{"rendered":"Ladivine by Marie NDiaye"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Translated by Jordan Stump<\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Maclehose Press UK\/Knopf US<\/strong><\/p>\n

17 March 2016\/ 26 April 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Anguish bleeds ceaselessly from this mysterious novel by the French author of Three Strong Women<\/em>, winner of the Prix Goncourt. At its heart is an act of racial denial, a light-skinned daughter\u2019s disowning of her passive black mother. From this original sin, all subsequent pain ensues.<\/p>\n

Clarisse Rivi\u00e8re, born Malinka, is the daughter of a poor black woman, Ladivine Sylla, and a white French father the girl never met (or so the reader assumes \u2013 specific pointers are few). Otherness and shame haunt Malinka\u2019s childhood and create an abyss between her and her mother whom she begins to refer to as the servant. When old enough, Clarisse moves to a different town, renames herself and thus turns the page on her past. She finds work in a bistro, meets a young man, Richard Rivi\u00e8re, they fall in love, marry and have a child.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But Clarisse\u2019s mother reappears in her life and the daughter reconciles the two separate halves of her existence by visiting Ladivine once a month while telling neither household of the other\u2019s existence. Ladivine never meets her son-in-law, nor her grandchild who shares the same name.<\/p>\n

So far, so terrible. NDiaye\u2019s prose, peculiar and intense, sifts the unhappy psychologies of her characters relentlessly. The cruelty and despair of Clarisse\u2019s decision are fully acknowledged, as are all the fine filaments of connection, of love and unbearable rejection binding mother and daughter. Clotted though the language (in the writing or the translation or both) may often be \u2013 and here\u2019s an example: \u2018Not trying to, by her emotions alone, Ladvine sensed, he was stirring up an odd frenzy in the children, especially Annika, an excitement at once teasing and frustrated, denied a conclusion that Marko\u2019s provocative manner seemed to promise\u2019 \u2013 there\u2019s a probing insistence to it that generates unusual, raw impact.<\/p>\n

The mother\/daughter schism, however, is only part of the story. Despite, or because of Clarisse\u2019s self-abnegating devotion to Richard and her daughter, her unswerving servitude to the idea of family, her relationships with both are doomed. The daughter moves to Germany, to marry a mild-mannered watch-repair man and have children of her own. And Richard, confounded by his wife’s passivity, leaves Clarisse who, distraught, is forced to move on to a different chapter of her fate.<\/p>\n

Impossible to expunge, the stain of racial avoidance continues to drive the narrative forward, especially during the German family\u2019s miserable holiday in an unnamed, probably African country where dreamy, fantastical events occur and Ladivine (the daughter) finds some kind of spiritual home. Violence, magic, essential natures are pursued exhaustively by an author unafraid of risks or of scrutinizing the most unpleasant of emotional truths.<\/p>\n

Parents and children suffer (deeply, if differently) in NDiaye\u2019s deterministic world, in which geography \u2013 mountains, forests, foreign spaces \u2013 bring their own psychological pressures. This enigmatic, didactic novel gives voice to a melancholy vision yet one that carries an innate power. Controversial, uncomfortable, it spins a tale that compels.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*A 2016 Notable Book<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/p>\n

Anguish bleeds ceaselessly from this mysterious novel by the French author of Three Strong Women<\/em>, winner of the Prix Goncourt. At its heart is an act of racial denial, a light-skinned daughter\u2019s disowning of her passive black mother. From this original sin, all subsequent pain ensues […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6702"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7213,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6702\/revisions\/7213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}