The Image of Her
Hardback Published on: 01/05/2025; Language: English, French (Original language of a translated text)
Price: £14.99
Bookseller Reviews
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Is it possible to live a perfect life
Originally written in French, Laurence is a woman who appears to live the ideal life with her husband, two daughters, and a lover.Constantly seeks perfecti... READ MORE
A fictionalised account of The Second Sex
In this novel we follow three female characters, all of whom are of different ages, at different stages of life (childhood, and both adulthood and late adu... READ MORE
Synopsis
Laurence is a woman who appears to live an ideal life.
Weekends in the country, weekdays in Paris – her life features all the trappings of 1960s French bourgeoisie. She has money, a handsome husband, two daughters and a lover. She also has a successful career as an advertising copywriter, though her mind unbidden writes copy while she’s at home, and dreams of domesticity in the office.
But Laurence is a woman whose experience of life has always been overwritten by the expectation of perfection. It is only when her 10-year-old daughter, Catherine, starts to vocalise her despair about the unfairness of the world that Laurence begins to act, finally grappling with a life that prizes image over truth.
TRANSLATED BY LAUREN ELKIN
Publisher information
- Publisher: Vintage Publishing
- ISBN: 9781784879907
- Number of pages: 208
- Dimensions: 206 x 136 x 22 mm
- Weight: 281g
- Languages: English, French (Original language of a translated text)
Customer Reviews
View allElegant and unsettling
In *The Image of Her* (originally *Les Belles Images*), Simone de Beauvoir crafts a sharp, introspective critique of bourgeois femininity in 1960s Paris. T... READ MORE
Emotional drifts
Laurence is a well-groomed woman with a good job in Paris, a husband, two daughters, a lover, and a home that people admire. She moves through a world of s... READ MORE
A subtle satire that bites.
This short novel is set in France in the early 60s within a very specific, well-to-do, well-connected group of people. The protagonist, in her 30s, archite... READ MORE
Bourgeois ennui
First published in French in 1966, Simone de Beauvoir’s Les Belles Images has as its backdrop social unrest, the Algerian conflict, modernism and the Vietn... READ MORE
Frenchness
Simone de Beauvoir’s The Image of Her beautifully captures the essence of Paris and its surrounding countryside, immersing the reader in a world of complex... READ MORE