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Albertine [IMPORT]
By the wide sands of Normandy a cluster of young girls wheel and play, riding their bicycles along the promenade their hair flying in the Channel winds. Among them is Albertine. A sickly boy watches, longing to posses some of the girls' vitality, their verve and beauty. For her part, Albertine envies his life, the Grand Hotel, the rich leisured friends, shopping on the Grands Boulevards. She makes her play, and wins. But eventually he will make Albertine his captive, trapping her in his airless Paris apartment and his suffocating, possessive love. And as she struggles with herself and her fate, the desire she feels is not for him but for others, her free, sensual women friends. In this powerfully atmospheric novel, Jacqueline Rose re-tells the story of Albertine from Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, from her point of view. But this remarkable retelling stands on its own. Cut free from the master's text, the woman's story carries us into a lush, dreamlike inner world, in which a drama of passion is played out on bodies and minds alike - suggestive and sexy, intriguing and provocative.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published October 25, 2001
About the author
Jacqueline Rose
76 books156 followersJacqueline Rose, FBA (born 1949, London) is a British academic who is currently Professor of Humanities at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.
Rose was born into a non-practicing Jewish family. Her elder sister was the philosopher Gillian Rose. Jacqueline Rose is known for her work on the relationship between psychoanalysis, feminism and literature. She is a graduate of St Hilda's College, Oxford and gained her higher degree (maîtrise) from the Sorbonne, Paris and her doctorate from the University of London.
Her book Albertine, a novel from 2001, is a feminist variation on Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
She is best known for her critical study on the life and work of American poet Sylvia Plath, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, published in 1991. In the book, Rose offers a postmodernist feminist interpretation of Plath's work, and criticises Plath's husband Ted Hughes and other editors of Plath's writing. Rose describes the hostility she experienced from Hughes and his sister (who acts as literary executor to Plath's estate) including threats received from Hughes about some of Rose's analysis of Plath's poem "The Rabbit Catcher". The Haunting of Sylvia Plath was critically acclaimed, and itself subject to a famous critique by Janet Malcolm in her book The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
Rose is a regular broadcaster on and contributor to the London Review of Books.
Rose's States of Fantasy was the inspiration for composer Mohammed Fairouz's Double Concerto of the same title.
(from Wikipedia)
Rose was born into a non-practicing Jewish family. Her elder sister was the philosopher Gillian Rose. Jacqueline Rose is known for her work on the relationship between psychoanalysis, feminism and literature. She is a graduate of St Hilda's College, Oxford and gained her higher degree (maîtrise) from the Sorbonne, Paris and her doctorate from the University of London.
Her book Albertine, a novel from 2001, is a feminist variation on Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
She is best known for her critical study on the life and work of American poet Sylvia Plath, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, published in 1991. In the book, Rose offers a postmodernist feminist interpretation of Plath's work, and criticises Plath's husband Ted Hughes and other editors of Plath's writing. Rose describes the hostility she experienced from Hughes and his sister (who acts as literary executor to Plath's estate) including threats received from Hughes about some of Rose's analysis of Plath's poem "The Rabbit Catcher". The Haunting of Sylvia Plath was critically acclaimed, and itself subject to a famous critique by Janet Malcolm in her book The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
Rose is a regular broadcaster on and contributor to the London Review of Books.
Rose's States of Fantasy was the inspiration for composer Mohammed Fairouz's Double Concerto of the same title.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 21, 2020
Ever wondered about Albertine, one of the major characters in Proust’s monumental novel. Wonder no more; Jacqueline Rose has written a novel from her point of view. This is a must for Proust fans and adds a feminist perspective to the whole. Rose explains herself thus;
“The germ came when I was re-reading one of the most beautiful passages in Proust- the sleep sequence in The Captive. Marcel walks in and embarks, as he puts it, upon the tide of Albertine’s sleep. As I was reading it, I had a sort of feminist response which is untypical of me. It felt quite overwhelming. I thought “She’s not asleep.” It’s just not possible that he could sit and stare at her; that he could lie down beside her; that he could proceed to do what he does next to her. I thought “No way! This woman is not asleep!””
Rose uses the novel to change, twist and subvert the relationship and other incidents from the book. This also fits very neatly into what Elaine Showalter calls “gynocriticism”, the location and rejuvenation of female characters, looking at their perspective. This is a very interesting attempt at this. It is written in the same style as the book and focusses on not only Marcel, but Albertine’s female friends as well. We hear the voice of Andrée as well, Albertine’s friend and lover.
Sometimes the book feels claustrophobic, but that reflects the relationship in Proust’s novel. Rose does bring Proust’s phantom to life, as she says;
“Imagining the psychic life of Albertine did not constitute a criticism of Proust. Rather it was a response to the space opened up by the author’s own suggestive omission. As Marcel, the privileged but ailing narrator becomes increasingly obsessed with the enigmatic déclassé orphan Albertine, eventually keeping her under constant surveillance, she becomes more and more of a phantom."
It is an interesting novel; and works well. Rose does avoid Albertine’s Anti-Semitism from the original; the all-consuming nature of the Dreyfuss case was a central part of Proust’s novel. On the whole it’s a fascinating read.
“The germ came when I was re-reading one of the most beautiful passages in Proust- the sleep sequence in The Captive. Marcel walks in and embarks, as he puts it, upon the tide of Albertine’s sleep. As I was reading it, I had a sort of feminist response which is untypical of me. It felt quite overwhelming. I thought “She’s not asleep.” It’s just not possible that he could sit and stare at her; that he could lie down beside her; that he could proceed to do what he does next to her. I thought “No way! This woman is not asleep!””
Rose uses the novel to change, twist and subvert the relationship and other incidents from the book. This also fits very neatly into what Elaine Showalter calls “gynocriticism”, the location and rejuvenation of female characters, looking at their perspective. This is a very interesting attempt at this. It is written in the same style as the book and focusses on not only Marcel, but Albertine’s female friends as well. We hear the voice of Andrée as well, Albertine’s friend and lover.
Sometimes the book feels claustrophobic, but that reflects the relationship in Proust’s novel. Rose does bring Proust’s phantom to life, as she says;
“Imagining the psychic life of Albertine did not constitute a criticism of Proust. Rather it was a response to the space opened up by the author’s own suggestive omission. As Marcel, the privileged but ailing narrator becomes increasingly obsessed with the enigmatic déclassé orphan Albertine, eventually keeping her under constant surveillance, she becomes more and more of a phantom."
It is an interesting novel; and works well. Rose does avoid Albertine’s Anti-Semitism from the original; the all-consuming nature of the Dreyfuss case was a central part of Proust’s novel. On the whole it’s a fascinating read.
August 30, 2015
I was intrigued by a retelling of Albertine's story from her own perspective but the book was simply dull - mimicking the long, slightly tedious prose that sometimes weighs Proust's work down rather than the moments of beauty and captivating insight.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews