Description
Book SynopsisQuintessential Anne Serre—this restless, prowling novel explores love as a form of greed, and confused need as one shape of bereftness
Trade Review"Genuinely original—and, often, very quietly so. Prim and racy, seriously weird and seriously excellent,
The Governesses is not a treatise but an aria, and one delivered with perfect pitch." -- Parul Seghal - New York Times Book Review
"Hypnotic, enchanting." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Strange, beguiling: a jewel." -- Kirkus
"[A] wry, unconventional novel about a woman's desire." -- The New Yorker
"Her books that have been translated into English—
The Governesses,
The Fool and Other Moral Tales and
The Beginners—have a glamour in the older sense of the word, that of witchcraft. These are books that, in their concern with the properties of fiction—plots, narrator, genre, characters—use these very elements to beguile." -- Rhian Sasseen - The Point
"
The Beginners is as much a celebration of the dizzying excesses of female desire as Serre’s other work. Even in comparatively realist mode, Serre is a seductress." -- Becca Rothfeld - Bookforum
