1952: Ivelle

by | Updated on 18/10/2024 | Published on 04/05/1952 | 1933-1952 Fuckin' youth, 2.1 Bibliographies, Miscellaneous novels

Julliard, 272 pages.

Ivelle is the story of a young girl of today. An ardent, restless soul, thirsting for justice… She believes she has discovered a kind of superman in Yvon, who sees himself as the founder of a new philosophy… She follows him to Paris, to the circles of Saint-Germain-des-Prés… She soon finds herself embroiled, along with her master, in a resounding murder case. (extracts from the 4th cover)

Apart from the murder story, you don’t have to be Sherlock Homes to guess that this novel is based on Françoise’s background: Yvon, wouldn’t you be Jean-Charles Pichon, the author of obscure interpretations on the history of myths? (Vincent)

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1951 : Le Complexe de Diane ; érotisme ou féminisme

by | Updated on 18/10/2024 | Published on 04/05/1951 | 1933-1952 Fuckin' youth, 2.1 Bibliographies, Philosophical essays

Paris, Julliard, 301 pages.

In response to the male and conservative criticism leveled at Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex , Françoise d’Eaubonne, a successful young novelist, responded with this book written in a few weeks and published with much hoopla by Julliard in 1951.

In this text, Françoise rushes to the front with the ardor that has already earned her the ire of Françoise Mauriac, with whom she clashes. She attacks all the conservatisms expressed about the place of women (or, rather of “woman,” as they say) in society. And does it cleverly: psychoanalysis and communism reign supreme over the left-wing intellectual life of the time. (Vincent)

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1951: Démons et merveilles

by | Updated on 18/10/2024 | Published on 04/05/1951 | 1933-1952 Fuckin' youth, 2.1 Bibliographies, Poetry

Paris, Pierre Seghers (coll. Poésie 51 n°137), 35 pages.

“A collection of very short poems, very hermetic (I constantly have to look up words and allusions) and very erudite (one expects nothing less from Françoise d’Eaubonne 🙂 ). Classical and traditional, it didn’t fill me with the same wonder as some of her other (too rare) poems.
A precious read, however, for its rarity, the work and the words.”

A reader on the Net

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1949: Indomptable Murcie

by | Updated on 18/10/2024 | Published on 04/05/1949 | 1933-1952 Fuckin' youth, 2.1 Bibliographies, Historical novels

René Julliard, coll. Sequana, 559 pages.

While this book is dedicated to the soul of her father, it is her Spanish roots that Françoise evokes through the story of this woman, dispossessed because she was a rebel, who, at the head of her Cuadrilla, was killed by the French in front of Saragossa in 1816 during Napoleon’s war of occupation.

In this novel of love, sound and fury, the “Sangre y Fuego” part making up half of the 550 pages, Françoise perfects her art of striking description, which transports us to the heart of the action, which is described with a visual meticulousness. .

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1947: Comme un vol de gerfauts

by | Updated on 18/10/2024 | Published on 04/05/1947 | 1933-1952 Fuckin' youth, 2.1 Bibliographies, Historical novels

Julliard, coll. Sequana, 526 pages.

Awarded the Readers’ Prize in 1947, this roman-fleuve announces themes and forms dear to Françoise that will be found throughout her novels. The sea, its buccaneers and its shipwrecks (at her request, Françoise’s ashes will be scattered by a sailboat off the coast of Morbihan), transforms the historical novel into a psychological narrative, because she thought this form was “more accessible to our modern sensibility”, as she says in the introduction. Hence our feeling, according to Élise Thiébaut, “to live adventures from the inside”, reinforced by striking, very pictorial descriptions. (Vincent)

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1944: Le Cœur de Watteau

by | Updated on 18/10/2024 | Published on 04/05/1944 | 1933-1952 Fuckin' youth, 2.1 Bibliographies, Fictional biographies

Julliard, 354 pages.

Written between 1942 and 1943, this novel is a succession of detailed images and earthy dialogues. The misery of the times that Françoise navigates as best she can finds an echo in the descriptions that she makes of popular life under Louis XIV. A whole world of craftsmen, shopkeepers and rank and file soldiers comes to life in these pages against the backdrop of the life and paintings of Antoine Watteau. Women are also very present there, especially Morena, who embodies a hard-won and preserved independence. This novel, which is deftly constructed in a masterly way, is surprisingly mature for a 22-year-old author. (Vincent)

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