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stargazerfish0's review against another edition
5.0
Although this is a book about nothing, it still EFFICIENTLY accomplishes what it sets out to do. It's an outline of a novel that makes its empty spaces made known. It leaves you with that charming little empty feeling that absurdity gives you. A good antidote from the formulaic novels. And guess what - it came from the 1950s! It definitely deserves to be read at least twice to fully appreciate how many times it tries to derail you from any actual plot.
hakimbriki's review against another edition
5.0
Je suis dans un état de superposition quantique par rapport à ce roman; je l'adore et je l'exècre. J'ai décidé de mettre 5/5 au moment T, mais j'aurais pu donner une toute autre note demain ou voire même une heure plus tard. Ce conflit intérieur est rare. Une partie de moi ne peut s'empêcher de le comparer à un sketch des Inconnus que les moins de 35 ans ne peuvent pas connaitre (Cinéma cinémas): Thereza...
Il faut dire qu'à peu près 80% de ce roman est consacré à des descriptions hyper détaillées d'une maison coloniale en Afrique subsaharienne. Il va sans dire que ces passages sont extrêment chiants et répétitifs. Cela dit, ils sont vraiment nécéssaires, car ils servent à transporter le lecteur dans l'univers, la maison et l'esprit de l'observateur. Cela nous donne un récit profondément claustrophobe, paranoïaque et très ambigu. Ce qui me plait le plus sont les non-dits. Robbe-Grillet place toute sa confiance en son lecteur, les titille, et leur délivre une énigme qui ne manquera pas de turlupiner les plus pensifs. L'auteur explore le thème de la perspective et de son impact sur la narration de manière brilliante, et permet aux lecteurs de se demander ce que diable A... et Franck mijotent en se mettant dans la peau du mari.
La jalousie est viscérale, difficile, et elle peut nous pousser à faire des folies. C'est un sentiment auquel on peut tous s'identifier. Certes, notre cher observateur n'a absolument aucune influence ou incidence sur l'histoire, mais occuper son univers réduit est une expérience exceptionellement distinctive, étrangement intense et presque effrayante.
Il faut dire qu'à peu près 80% de ce roman est consacré à des descriptions hyper détaillées d'une maison coloniale en Afrique subsaharienne. Il va sans dire que ces passages sont extrêment chiants et répétitifs. Cela dit, ils sont vraiment nécéssaires, car ils servent à transporter le lecteur dans l'univers, la maison et l'esprit de l'observateur. Cela nous donne un récit profondément claustrophobe, paranoïaque et très ambigu. Ce qui me plait le plus sont les non-dits. Robbe-Grillet place toute sa confiance en son lecteur, les titille, et leur délivre une énigme qui ne manquera pas de turlupiner les plus pensifs. L'auteur explore le thème de la perspective et de son impact sur la narration de manière brilliante, et permet aux lecteurs de se demander ce que diable A... et Franck mijotent en se mettant dans la peau du mari.
La jalousie est viscérale, difficile, et elle peut nous pousser à faire des folies. C'est un sentiment auquel on peut tous s'identifier. Certes, notre cher observateur n'a absolument aucune influence ou incidence sur l'histoire, mais occuper son univers réduit est une expérience exceptionellement distinctive, étrangement intense et presque effrayante.
ralowe's review against another edition
3.0
at the end of the day it's still going to be a plantation, so what else do you really need to know? but the veranda, the column, the place-settings, the trapezoidal arrangements of the rows of banana trees, the crickets: this is where it's at. i can play with the notion that anticolonial resources reside here, notwithstanding the author's aptitude for unveiling for the sake of greater anthropological efficiency all our inquiries into "the singsong voice of the Negroes, which detaches certain syllables by emphasizing them too much, sometimes in the middle of words."ќ (pg. 59). this is ficiont iwth no protagonist, no three act structure. or are all these things implied? is one to infer through the schema of properties a narrative for the eponymous property-related emotion? i think you get the most out of the scenery and its minutae as presented by alain robbe-grillet by not thinking about "jealousy"ќ while reading *jealousy*. did oulipo and the other french ambigramic movements (oupolpot, ougrapo, etc) felt there was nothing more to tell since we are all the subject supposed to know already, leaving nothing for the griot to impart, no moral, no ethical demonstration, just luxuriate in the all-consumingly assaultive sensorium. or are all the landscaping details an object lesson for the bourgeosie upon the menial and banal lifeworlds of servitude. why would you want to read a novel about detailing the tasks of your shitty job? something happens, i think, but the description jumps around, is partial, and intentionally distracts from the motivations of the figures depicted (not characters). everything is surface, and i did think of heather love. is this ethical representation? why write about people who run a plantation anyway? this novel also made me think of claire denis' masterful film *white material*, and i wonder how much robbe-grillet's art is informed by neo-realist cinema.
zkendall's review against another edition
4.0
Weird book: "Nouveau roman." It's good though. Be aware it's not you're normal gripping novel :P.
sarratbb's review against another edition
3.0
Okay. I won't recommend this to anyone unless you are interested in challenging literature (in both writing and reading). Also, in order to remotely enjoy this book, I had to take the overanalytical route and read it like I had to study it in class. It is not a book you read for fun at the beach or a cozy psychological thriller. This is a very detailed description of events (if you can call them that) and of the writing process itself in the shadow (one of the characteristics of Nouveau Roman). It has a lot of symbolism and polysemic expressions and words that make it fascinating (without these, this book is super boring and annoying). And since Nouveau Roman is all about forgetting the character, they have no psychology and no personality, they are just writing tools. I am not going to say more, just stay away from it. If you are still interested, I recommend you read articles online that explain the book, it will help you understand it, or at least give you an idea and help you decide whether you want to read it or not. Here is a link (french article) : https://journals.openedition.org/carnets/4657
cristina0194's review against another edition
1.0
This is why I don't like to read books that are out of my comfort zone... because they bore me. Or I don't understand things. And this book was just like this!
I really didn't like it and I felt like I should DNF it a lot of times, but I finished it anyway, because it was short.
I really didn't like it and I felt like I should DNF it a lot of times, but I finished it anyway, because it was short.
islayfraser's review against another edition
1.0
Le concept de donner aux lecteurs un rôle actif dans la production du roman est fascinant, mais cette exécution ne l'est pas.
naimfrewat's review against another edition
4.0
I gave this book 4 stars though I could have given it, easily, 1 star.
I refuse to see any symbolism in the book, nor suggest any interpretation that is not explicitly mentioned (it won't be an interpretation but a reflection).
There's no doubt that this work is better formatted to the cinema. The description of the light as it rotates around the house, the repetition of the scenes, of the movement of the human beings, this eye of the narrator that captures the minutest of changes, somewhat like the football-centric camera that tracks the movement of the ball as it it passed among players, would have been more captivating to my senses had it been in a movie.
I understand that the nouveau roman wants to shatter a certain concept of the novel, with the characters, the omniscient narrator, the symbolism, the gap filling that a reader might engage in, particularly once the novel is read. But this new "genre’s » grotesque denial of a centuries-old tradition needs much more in conceptualization, engagement and a unified vision to what the nouveau roman ought to be like, before succeeding in imposing itself as a credible alternative.
As such, I finished reading with feelings that moved from the impressed to the interested to end with dissatisfaction.
I very much liked the present tense and this maintenant with which several scenes (if this books comprises any) start. Related to that, I liked the time described in spatial terms, the length of the objects or the architectural structures’ shadows reflects the time of day. Halfway through, I supposed the « events » that take place in this book must’ve happened all in one day. The last pages clearly erased that supposition from my mind.
Building on those last pages, I could not understand why all of a sudden the Robbe-Grillet attempted a certain chronological structure to the « events » (if one can label them so) of the book. In doing so, this representative specimen of the nouveau roman falls into the « trap » of the classical novel in attempting to wrap up a story. Though I can’t say the book has an ending, the ending is only the absence of the light of day, still the last pages felt coherent for a story that continuously shifted timelines and points of view.
What I also could not tolerate at all - hence the removed star - is the novel that the characters read and went over, all throughout the book. Robbe-Grillet briefly mentions its main headlines then goes on to contradict them, with the sentence that follows. That is one of the flaws that might tempt nouveau roman writers, a drift towards nihilism.
To end on a motivating note (motivating for future Robbe-Grillet readers), I liked that the nouveau roman gets defined throughout the book, very succinctly and almost imperceptibly and if I ever I decide to re-read this book, I would note whether small changes that accompany the shifting length of the shadows lead to an accident, thereby creating the single event towards which the novel might tend.
All in all, I do recommend this book. It is also a testimonial to the great intellectual vitality that characterized the French culture post-WW2, and to this reader, it gave a stylistic inspiration that will be put to test when scribbling in his diary.
I refuse to see any symbolism in the book, nor suggest any interpretation that is not explicitly mentioned (it won't be an interpretation but a reflection).
There's no doubt that this work is better formatted to the cinema. The description of the light as it rotates around the house, the repetition of the scenes, of the movement of the human beings, this eye of the narrator that captures the minutest of changes, somewhat like the football-centric camera that tracks the movement of the ball as it it passed among players, would have been more captivating to my senses had it been in a movie.
I understand that the nouveau roman wants to shatter a certain concept of the novel, with the characters, the omniscient narrator, the symbolism, the gap filling that a reader might engage in, particularly once the novel is read. But this new "genre’s » grotesque denial of a centuries-old tradition needs much more in conceptualization, engagement and a unified vision to what the nouveau roman ought to be like, before succeeding in imposing itself as a credible alternative.
As such, I finished reading with feelings that moved from the impressed to the interested to end with dissatisfaction.
I very much liked the present tense and this maintenant with which several scenes (if this books comprises any) start. Related to that, I liked the time described in spatial terms, the length of the objects or the architectural structures’ shadows reflects the time of day. Halfway through, I supposed the « events » that take place in this book must’ve happened all in one day. The last pages clearly erased that supposition from my mind.
Building on those last pages, I could not understand why all of a sudden the Robbe-Grillet attempted a certain chronological structure to the « events » (if one can label them so) of the book. In doing so, this representative specimen of the nouveau roman falls into the « trap » of the classical novel in attempting to wrap up a story. Though I can’t say the book has an ending, the ending is only the absence of the light of day, still the last pages felt coherent for a story that continuously shifted timelines and points of view.
What I also could not tolerate at all - hence the removed star - is the novel that the characters read and went over, all throughout the book. Robbe-Grillet briefly mentions its main headlines then goes on to contradict them, with the sentence that follows. That is one of the flaws that might tempt nouveau roman writers, a drift towards nihilism.
To end on a motivating note (motivating for future Robbe-Grillet readers), I liked that the nouveau roman gets defined throughout the book, very succinctly and almost imperceptibly and if I ever I decide to re-read this book, I would note whether small changes that accompany the shifting length of the shadows lead to an accident, thereby creating the single event towards which the novel might tend.
All in all, I do recommend this book. It is also a testimonial to the great intellectual vitality that characterized the French culture post-WW2, and to this reader, it gave a stylistic inspiration that will be put to test when scribbling in his diary.
msjoanna's review against another edition
3.0
This novel is an important work of literature, but it was only sort of fun to read. The book uses third-person limited viewpoint in the extreme -- the entire book is told from the perspective of an unnamed "objective" narrator as if the narrator is a video camera recording events by peering through windows. On the one hand, it's an interesting approach that stretches the narrative form. On the other hand, it's pretty distant and sometimes a little obsessively boring (e.g., counting the number of trees and how many rows of each are visible, reviewing the position of shadows over the veranda).
Despite moments of boredom, I still found the book to have a compelling rhythm -- the same events are reviewed over and over in the narrator's mind as he gets more and more jealous and obsessed with the idea that "A..." is involved with the neighbor. While the narrator is unnamed and undescribed, it seems likely that the narrator is A...'s husband.
This would be an interesting book to have read in a literature class where I'd be reading critiques and examinations of the form in parallel and perhaps contrasting the book directly with other efforts to play with narrative structure. In some ways, the narrative reminded me of [b:Infinite Jest|6759|Infinite Jest|David Foster Wallace|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165604485s/6759.jpg|3271542], but I have trouble articulating exactly why.
Despite moments of boredom, I still found the book to have a compelling rhythm -- the same events are reviewed over and over in the narrator's mind as he gets more and more jealous and obsessed with the idea that "A..." is involved with the neighbor. While the narrator is unnamed and undescribed, it seems likely that the narrator is A...'s husband.
This would be an interesting book to have read in a literature class where I'd be reading critiques and examinations of the form in parallel and perhaps contrasting the book directly with other efforts to play with narrative structure. In some ways, the narrative reminded me of [b:Infinite Jest|6759|Infinite Jest|David Foster Wallace|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165604485s/6759.jpg|3271542], but I have trouble articulating exactly why.