You Don't Love Yourself Book

The point of interest in Sarraute's latest novel, You Don't Love Yourself, is not in the action or conversation, but rather in that underlying, unconscious, and somewhat secret dialogue we hold with ourselves. Refusing to assign names or identities to her characters, Sarraute presents the narrator and his/her conscience as one immense profusion of sentiments, sensations and impulses. The dialogue, full of hesitations, affirmations and disputes, presents tantalizing ambiguity as to who is speaking and to whom. With her usual imaginative zest, Sarraute describes the characteristic clumsy starts and thrusts that accompany our desperate efforts to make contact with others. In her endeavors to present human character as accurately as possible, Sarraute investigates the doubting, vacillating unconscious that is the root of all superficial actions and reactions. Her characters' murmuring voices echo our own thought processes and lead us to the inevitable self-examination that makes this book both eye-opening and unforgettable.

Library Journal

In her ninth novel, one of France's major authors examines the issue of self-love through a long and convoluted dialog taking place between parts, or strands, of a personality. The separate parts of the personality take on distinct voices and have quite different interpretations of events and exchanges that have occurred within the life of the collective ``we,'' engaging in rambling, speculative, often accusatory reminiscences. The novel progresses in a slow, circular fashion: tension is built up entirely from within the character, between its voices. Much is kept vague, as if written from, or descriptive of, a dream state. This is a fascinating novel, full of the elliptical yet probingly psychological prose so characteristic of Sarraute.-- Jessica Grim, Univ. of California at Berkeley Lib.