translated by Dolores Sierra and Neus Sánchez
illustrated by Sara Herranz
I’ve never read anything by Simone de Beauvoir, and I guess La Femme rompue (The Woman Destroyed) is not exactly the work one should start with. Still, I duly read the text, written in a form of a diary of a middle-aged lady named Monique. The protagonist couldn’t irritate me more. I’m pretty sure it’s done on purpose. So she has been married to her college sweetheart for twenty years; abandoned her career for marriage and children; now her two grown-up daughters live independently while her husband is involved with a younger and ambitious woman. Kind of “normal”. Even so, Monique is having a breakdown. You’d think the author could have been a bit more sympathetic to her creation. But no. Ms de Beauvoir singularly fails to give her — admiteddly flawed, and who isn’t? — heroine what this latter needs most: love. It’s a shame really, because the novella is well-written and masterfully translated.
The real (if not the only) reason I took this book from the library was the illustrations by Sara Herranz. (This time, just black and white, without her signature red.) They tell the story beautifully, without idealising or judging, and make us care about Monique like Simone de Beauvoir never managed to do. In fact, forget the text. It doesn’t add anything to what Sara’s drawings say.
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