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Lydie Salvayre: La Vie commune (Everyday Life)
Suzanne Barette is a widow of thirty-two years who works as a secretary in the offce of M. Meyer who has gone from being simply an accountant to running a successful marketing firm. Suzanne has a married daughter (unnamed) whom she sees every Sunday and no friends except perhaps her cleaning lady (whom she later overhears criticising her) and M. Longuet, an ageing and infirm old man who lives in her building and who is more interested in her than she is in him.
However, M. Meyer has now decided to appoint another secretary. Suzanne is not happy. She likes order and structure. She seems somewhat autistic. She gives us frequent descriptions of this woman who soon becomes her nemesis. She has fat thighs, which she keeps slightly spread to avoid the itching caused by her sweating skin… Her skin is nauseatingly white; she’s blonde. .. She has huge breasts. Drooping, dreary, unappealing breasts that she points at people, not to drive them wild with desire, or tempt them, or to arouse their lust, but rather to crush them, to blind them, to smother and unnerve them… and she stinks (of cheap perfume. Suzanne will add to these descriptions in telling both M. Longuet (who seems to be turned on by her physical attributes) and her daughter (who is indifferent).
In short Suzanne cannot stand her. Her presence is strangely disconcerting. I say disconcerting deliberately. I simply can’t get her out of my mind. She’s putting down roots within me, spreading, living, aching inside me, sending shoots into the tiniest cracks.
Suzanne will continue to obsess over her,sharing her obsession with us but also with M. Longuet and her daughter. M Longuet is sympathetic. Her daughter is not and tells her mother that she is being unreasonable.
Her daughter does not have a particularly easy life. Her husband is a successful doctor and seems to be one of those doctors that consider themselves superior beings. When he comes home , he is very critical of his wife. However when the three go on holiday together as they do once a year, he is certainly not an ideal son-in-law.
However, despite her problems with her daughter, her son-in-law and M. Longuet, who is clearly attracted to her, it is. Suzanne’s ever increasing obsession with the secretary that predominates. She is trying to win over M. Meyer, by sucking in her stomach and pushing her breasts forward when he appears. Suzanne smokes and the secretary objects, sometimes quite aggressively so that her shitty little life might last long enough for her to reach senility, dementia, and quadriplegia. She shows Suzanne photos of her son (hideous and of herself (also hideous. Simply hideous.)
Suzanne has pains in her chest so she goes to the doctor. She is very clear as to the cause. It is obviously the new secretary. She blurts out a long story to the poor doctor: I’m not impressionable, Doctor, nor am I very emotional. Long ago I got rid of the clutter of sentimentality and its accompanying over-sensitivity. The doctor is polite but has other patients. You have an emergency, Doctor? Well then, I’ll be brief: she is preventing me from having a life.
M.Meyer seems to be oblivious to her coarse manners, her persistent unsightliness, her curlicues, frills, gaudy costume jewellery, and carnivore’s appetite for domination and, amazingly seems quite taken with her. Suzanne cannot understand why.
Of course we find this all very funny as Suzanne gets worse and worse and more and more obsessed and is clearly driving herself to a breakdown. M. Longuet is somewhat sympathetic but with an ulterior motive. No-one else is even vaguely sympayhetic. But for Suzanne, the situation is clear. I loathe her, I loathe her, I loathe her, I loathe her, I loathe her.
In what is a relatively short book, we go from a sad,lonely older woman to a raving, obsessed harpie. Yes it is funny that Suzanne can be so obsessive. Doubtless we have all had annoying colleagues and done our best to keep out of their way but her behaviour is totally irrational and funny but sad at the same time.
Publishing history
First published in 1991 by Julliard
First published in English in 2006 by Dalkey Archive Press
Translated by Jane Kuntz