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Carole Maso's stunning, erotic fourth novel chronicles the dark, irresistible adventures of an American writer named Catherine who has come to France to live. Set into motion by a single act of abandonment-Catherine's lover of ten years has left her-she falls deeper and deeper into an irretrievable madness. With passionate abandon and detachment Catherine pursues her own destruction. Forcing the boundaries of identity and the limits of her eroticism, she enters a series of blinding sexual encounters with a poet, a fascist, a young Arlesian woman, a fireman, and three thieves. Eerily she splits herself in two so that she is both the one who watches and the one who is watched, creator and creation, author and character, as she observes herself from afar "And I would like to help her," the one who watches says, "but I can't." Finally she meets Lucien, the solitary, cynical, beautiful man with long hair who looks as though he has "stepped out of an unmade film by the dead Truffaut," and through this mysterious, doomed, bittersweet liaison Catherine makes one last attempt to halt her decline through the redemptive act of story-telling. She begins to invent the story of their lives, telling it to him half in English, half in French, joining their solitudes for a moment before losing forever her belief that the shapely, hopeful prospects of narrative make sense of expenence. "She notices how everything is given up or taken away" as she loses the power of the imagination or memory or the body to console, and finally of language to convey meaning. This mesmerizing drama of sex, betrayal, and dissolution with its shattering inevitable conclusion is played out against the dazzling backdrop of the beautiful, indifferent Cote d'Azur in summer. Written in a dwindling lexicon with a simple, warped musicality, The American Woman in the Chinese Hat is a dark, uncompromising, seductive work of art.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Ted Donosti
reviewed The American woman in the Chinese hat on January 28, 2015
The American woman in the Chinese hat
I did not set out to read consecutive books about young American women living alone in France. It just happened. First, The Dud Avocado, and then immediately this. The coincidence, nevertheless, begs comparison. The Dud Avocado creates a wonderful character, Sally Jay Gorce, someone I might not like in real life; but the book, in Sally Jay's first person, creates a unique voice. And that voice carries through from start to finish. I was highly entertained.
The American Woman in the Chinese Hat is in the 'voice' of Catherine. Catherine is a writer, living with Lola. Catherine has many affairs. Lola has one. Fair's fair, I sez; but Catherine instead flees to France.* She takes her notebook, her cahier with her. Cause, you know, she's a writer. So she writes down what she sees: the light, the flowers, the man by the fountain. Voilà , a novel.
That's unfair of me. That's not a novel. You have to repeat everything, over and over. Words, phrases, sentences, dialogue. But that's unfair too. Because that would be old school, not experimental or - what is it? - post-modern or something. To make sure, change from the first-person to the third-person, willy-nilly, because, you know, art.
So:
I am the woman in the Chinese hat.
I am the woman in the Chinese hat that writes.
I am the woman in the Chines hat that writes and cries.
She cries.
The roses are yellow. There is a man at the fountain. He has cheveux longs. He has a Kenzo t-shirt.
Côtes du Rhône.
She cries.
(Cue in Madame Butterfly and Death in Venice references. Often.)
American Republican politicians are stupid. Every one. So are their wives.
Row, row, row your boat.
The man at the fountain has cheveux longs. He wears a Kenzo t-shirt.
She cries.
She is just a woman in a white room, that's all. It doesn't mean anything. She can't remember what it means. She opens her legs.
Someone is reading Death in Venice. Someone is listening to Madame Butterfly. The roses are yellow. Someone is drinking Côtes du Rhône.
She cries.
Maybe he is inside her now. She can't be sure. The body a last vague----
Nancy Reagan is stupid.
She cries.
I am the woman in the Chinese hat who writes and cries.**
______________________________________________
*Early on she asks for avocados. I don't want to make too much out of that. But, you know: homage.
**Annoyed? Then don't read this book. I left the sex out of my review, but the sex, although abundant, did not redeem this weepy self-indulgence.
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