Three Strong Women

May 05, 2012 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: in-french, mttbr-2012

Creative writing exercise: I'll give you the words that I had to look up. Not all of them, but the ones I remember, mostly because they were repeated. Often. 1. Write a story that includes all these words. 2. Use them early, use them often. This will ensure that, by some magical means, they become imbued with Deeper Significance.

flamboyant - (no, not flamboyant. That would be too easy) a flame tree.

tongs - flip-flops

hotte - extractor fan hood over the cooker (or not quite, in this case)

avilissan...more

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Aug 15, 2012 Martha marked it as to-read · review of another edition

I cannot help it. I am a sucker for a good NPR review.

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Nov 22, 2012 Kinga rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If I were the sort of person who writes one-word reviews, I’d say: “intriguing”. Because this book is definitely intriguing. Don’t be put off by the long sentences, occasional editorial glitches and some repetitions – in the end “Three Strong Women” is a rewarding book. Marie Ndiaye might prefer commas to periods but she can write. And it’s still an improvement from her debut novel, which, I hear, was a 200 page long and contained only ONE sentence, so obviously Ndiaye is overcoming some innate...more If I were the sort of person who writes one-word reviews, I’d say: “intriguing”. Because this book is definitely intriguing. Don’t be put off by the long sentences, occasional editorial glitches and some repetitions – in the end “Three Strong Women” is a rewarding book. Marie Ndiaye might prefer commas to periods but she can write. And it’s still an improvement from her debut novel, which, I hear, was a 200 page long and contained only ONE sentence, so obviously Ndiaye is overcoming some innate aversion to periods and we should support her.

I was surprised to learn ‘Three Strong Women’ is not a novel but a set of three novellas, so just as I was getting into the story of Norah, a slightly neurotic control freak with serious daddy’s issues I was pulled out of it, transported from Senegal back to France to join Rudy on a very long day during which he was going to reminisce over what a failure he was. The second novella is the longest and is brought to a satisfying end before the reader has to embark on yet another journey, again in Senegal, where Khady fights to maintain her identity because it is the last thing she still has in her miserable life.

While this book is by no means of the magical realism kind, there are certain shifts in perception, certain unreliability of memories and that peculiar self-disassociation that the characters suffer from, that made put it on my ‘dreamy books’ shelf. There is also a very authentic exploration of a bully’s psyche and insecurities in the second novella.

You can have a lot of fun setting these three novellas against each other and looking for common themes and tropes. For example, the characters in the first and second novella suffer from weird, possibly psychosomatic, afflictions in their nether regions. In the second and third novella, there are ‘bad omen’ birds. In the first and second novella we are in (a loosely defined) First World, while the third one takes place in a decisively Third World reality. The first and the last one are told from a female point of view with male characters only as shadowy figures - it’s the other way round in the second novella. You could go on like that for ages, try it. I don’t know why my brain needs to catalogue things like that, but it does that whether I want it or not.

As this book has very strong links with Senegal, I decided to cook something Senegalese for dinner. The most traditional, national dish seems to be Thiéboudienne – Senegalese Fish and Rice. I have found a dozen of recipes on the internet and each one of them was different, so in the end I improvised using all of them. My three most important sources of inspiration were these: http://honestcooking.com/2012/11/02/s..., http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes..., and http://www.ethnikka.org/2011/01/seneg.... It’s a rather time consuming dish, because each component must be cooked separately but in the same sauce. The result is delicious, though.

Due to the lack of any interesting fish, I used Vietnamese river cobbler (also known as panga or catfish) and without getting into a long debate here, you’re not going to die from eating it, despite whatever nonsense you might’ve read on the internets. The truth is that sort of nonsense propaganda appeared only (very interestingly) in the countries which have a local, more expensive equivalent of panga (i.e. cod). It’s been one of the most popular fish in Poland since mid-90’s and no decrease in life expectancy has been observed (but then we don’t have a strong cod lobby, what we do have is second biggest Vietnamese community in Europe, weirdly). The only thing you should be concerned about panga is the food miles.
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Apr 26, 2013 Jean-Pierre added it · review of another edition

Quel livre étrange ... moi qui ne suis pas membre de l'Académie Goncourt, je n'ai pas apprécié. Il est vrai que Marie Ndiaye fait preuve d'une admirable maîtrise de la langue; mais cela ne me frappe pas nécessairement comme "beau", et, à la limite, comme une bonne formule trop souvent répétée. Comme dans d'autres Prix Goncourt, les personnages (ici, plutôt, le personnage de chaque nouvelle) sont explorés jusque dans les moindres recoins de leurs pensées et motivations. Mais cela ralentit outre m...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Steven Langdon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: super

Marie Ndiaye writes from the depths of her struggling and troubled characters, tracing their fears and despairs and internal debates with compulsive force that pulls the reader along despite the pain and the suffering in the fractured world which the author explores. This fracturing is based, above all, Ndiaye seems to say, on the racial divide between Europe and Africa -- and the uncertainties experienced by the children in the middle.

Ms. Ndiaye is herself one such child, with an African Senega...more Marie Ndiaye writes from the depths of her struggling and troubled characters, tracing their fears and despairs and internal debates with compulsive force that pulls the reader along despite the pain and the suffering in the fractured world which the author explores. This fracturing is based, above all, Ndiaye seems to say, on the racial divide between Europe and Africa -- and the uncertainties experienced by the children in the middle.

Ms. Ndiaye is herself one such child, with an African Senegalese father and a white French mother; her father left her when she was a young child and she did not see him again until she was 15 -- very much like Norah, the woman who is the central character in the first of the three vignettes in this novel. Norah returns to Senegal to re-connect with her father, because her skills as a lawyer are needed to try to save her brother, Sony. In the course of her return, she re-lives the agonies of her family's earlier break-up and the desperate sense of desertion that she felt -- finding some solace in helping the brother who cared about her, even though she must distance herself from her own child to do so.

The second vignette then shifts to an even more challenging task for Ndiaye, an internal perspective from a white French man who has taken his well-educated African Senegalese wife back to live in a small French city, where she is not able to do the teaching at which she is so skilled. Rudy Descas is a man tormented by self-doubt, created in part by his mother's racism, but taking the form of suspicion of his wife Fanta, aggression toward his co-workers and distance from his son Djibril. His subtle and not-so-subtle oppression of Fanta over the years becomes apparent as his self-dialogue proceeds -- and all that provides some small hope for the future is the endurance of caring for his son that may yet give his life integrity. Fanta's strength in safeguarding her son is the powerful force that makes this possible -- symbolized by the buzzard that threatens Rudy when he seems set to destroy their lives.

Birds also play a key role as symbols in the final vignette, focused on a poor young Senegalese woman named Khady Demba (who is also a minor character in the first vignette.) Crows circle her, their black and white plumage representing the division between her extreme poverty and the wealth she feels she can reach in Europe if she can escape her continent. Her suffering is especially savage, as she becomes exploited sexually and economically in an extreme way. Again, Ndiaye is deeply insightful in her probing of how Demba nevertheless grows in terms of her own sense of self-dignity as she comes to better understand her situation.

Marie Ndiaye has just been nominated for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize for her writing. This novel itself won the main French literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. Readers of this book will soon understand why the author has received such recognition. The "strong women" of this book are not stylized heroines. They are complex and troubled human beings just like many other people -- but they struggle, they think, they feel, and they live with caring and depth. Marie Ndiaye brings them indelibly alive in this indictment of ongoing racial and gender inequalities. (less)

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Feb 05, 2013 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Ndiaye's writing is crystalline, her syntax and phrasing wonderful (though some might find the length of her sentences overwhelming -- I loved how she plumbed the character's thoughts through and through to reveal uncanny insights which are seldom articulated so well). I also feel that symbolism is seldom used by contemporary writers to such extraordinary effect, possibly because they cannot carry it off or because they feel it's too obvious. For example, Ndiaye's use of birds as symbols of both...more

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Dec 15, 2012 Ada Bonnefoi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: french-lit

Three women, three lives, three destinies. Three separate stories that are subtly interwoven.

Norah, a lawyer, hasn´t had an easy life until now and when her father, to whom she had no contact at all for years, asks her for a favor she reacts reluctantly. She should get his son out of trouble. Old incidents surfaces again tearing up old wounds and the focus is on her childhood that she would rather forget.

In the second story its all about Fanta and her husband Rudy, a suspended French teacher, wh...more

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Nov 10, 2012 Jim Elkins rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This won the Goncourt Prize in 2009, and has been reviewed ecstatically. I read the principal novella of the three, the one that occupies two-thirds of the book. It is an unappealing book: conservative and full of clichés. For me, the meliorating quality was the oddity of Ndiaye’s way of thinking.

At first it appears that what matters to Ndiaye is the construction of elaborate long sentences that produce introspective surprises. Those sentences are often in single paragraphs, and even when she wr...more
This won the Goncourt Prize in 2009, and has been reviewed ecstatically. I read the principal novella of the three, the one that occupies two-thirds of the book. It is an unappealing book: conservative and full of clichés. For me, the meliorating quality was the oddity of Ndiaye’s way of thinking.

At first it appears that what matters to Ndiaye is the construction of elaborate long sentences that produce introspective surprises. Those sentences are often in single paragraphs, and even when she writes brief sentences she prefers them in individual paragraphs. (I haven’t checked the original French: I’m assuming that a translator wouldn’t make up such an obvious device.) As a result her thought—the inner monologue of the main character—stumbles along in single steps, as if each moment, each sentence, has to contain an insight, catharsis, or expressive image that needs to be savored, like an epigram, before the reader continues.

At times the long sentences yield moments of unexpected or dense reflection that could compel a reader to stop a moment; but other times the sentences are not especially well-formed, expressive, or insightful:

“That particularly striking quality of his, he recalled in the ensuing silence, a weakly panting silence that sounded as if he were phoning a far-off country with rudimentary communications, his words needing all these slow seconds to arrive, though it was only the echo of Fanta’s anxious breathing as she pondered the best way of answering his question so as to safeguard he knew not what—her dared not imagine—future interests she might have (a bubble of anger suddenly exploded in his head: what possible future could she envisage that didn’t include him?), yes, he recalled, as he let his eyes wander over the green vines with their tiny bright green grapes, over the green oaks beyond them that the property’s new owners, those Americans or Australians (who fascinated and upset Mummy because she believed the vineyard should have stayed in French hands), had pruned so savagely until the trees looked humiliated, punished for daring to let their shiny, unfading foliage grow so dense as to partially conceal the once grayish, now blond and fresh stonework of what was, after all, only a large house, though of the kind on which people of these parts bestowed the respectful name of ‘chateau,’ yes, that particularly striking impression that his own blondness, his own freshness, made over there…”
[Ellipses end the paragraph in the original.]

This rhythm of language, of thinking, in which a thought stands by itself, and gives the thinker or reader a little shock of recognition, becomes monotonous—and not only when the longer thoughts (that is, the longer paragraphs) fail to yield any particular insight. Ndiaye thinks one step at a time, like a senile person who takes one step, contemplates something, and then takes another step—or, because senility isn’t the issue here, perhaps more like a stamp collector, who puts each treasured object in its proper place and goes on to the next, row after row. I find it oddly limiting, as if she is herself afraid of thinking in longer stanzas.

All that is one reason I found this book tiring. The other is its relentlessly conventional, bourgeois mentality. The main character is tortured by his past: he has lied to himself and more or less ruined his life, and in the course of the novella he loses his job, probably his wife, and his last connection to his mother. As a reader, you’re meant to feel his embarrassment when his co-workers, his boss, and even his own child shun him. He is awkward and unreliable; he sweats and scratches himself; he can’t quite see through his own self-deceptions. At the time time, like characters from Flaubert and Zola onward, he loves middle-class life: his job, until he loses it, is designing overly expensive kitchens for upwardly-aspiring clients, and he admires other people’s kitchens. All these things—the striving, the embarrassment, the class aspirations, the ruined ineffectual self-interrogation—are stocks in trade of the bourgeois novel, just the kind of thing Barthes dissected, just the sort of thing that modern and postmodern writing have left behind. It’s sad that there are people who still need to read these narratives of ordinary class-based despair.(less)

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Sep 28, 2012 Elisabeth Gotzmann rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Prix goncourt 2009

Amertume et désillusion.Souffrance.
Trois récits, trois femmes (vraiment!... le deuxième récit est celui d'un homme), trois histoires.
Thème: «Non à l'humiliation et oui à la vie» Vraiment?!

La première femme est avocate et retourne en Afrique défendre son frère alors qu'il est accusé pour meurtre de la femme de son père (C'est le père le véritable meurtrier). Ce n'est pas un polar. C'est tout au plus un récit de la relation difficile de l'avocate avec son père.

Le deuxième récit...more

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Jul 27, 2011 Laurence Petit added it · review of another edition

"Cela aussi, Norah s'en souvenait, elle l'avait inscrit dans l'inépuisable colonne des griefs à l'encontre de son père, sachant bien qu'elle ne lui ferait part ni des graves ni des bénins, sachant bien qu'elle ne pourrait jamais rappeler dans la réalité du face-à-face avec cet homme insondable l'audace dont elle ne manquait pas au loin pour l'accabler de reproches, et de ce fait mécontente, déçue par elle-même et plus fâchée encore contre lui de plier le genou, de n'oser rien dire."
"Cela n'a ni...more

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Mar 21, 2013 Michael Jenkins rated it 2 of 5 stars

Three woman experience heartache and triumph in this novel about loyalty to love ones. Norah is a struggling female that is trying to patch up the estranged relationship with her Father, who she feels strange to call Dad. It is one thing for her dad to try to make amends but is difficult for her to take his efforts seriously,when her inner conscience says that he cannot be trusted. Next,we have Fanta who tries to be amicable to her boyfriend but to no avail. Lastly, Khady has difficulty conceivi...more

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Sep 25, 2012 Louise Silk rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Three Strong Women is actually three separate stories. The first is Norah who's come back to Senegal at her distant father's request. The second is Fanta who's left Senegal years ago and now lives a mediocre life in France with her alienated husband. And finally Khady, who is forced into exile by her in-laws following the death of her husband.

I loved Norah's storyline and was really disappointed when I realized there was an abrupt halt with no ending. Fanta's story is told through the eyes of a...more

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Nov 16, 2012 Beth added it

Shelves: africa, francophone-world, fiction

This book is exquisitely and powerfully written – well deserving of its Prix Goncourt – yet it is not one that I would recommend to anyone I know. The three separate stories, which relate to each other only by thin strands of connection, give us a glimpse into the strength of three Senegalese women. But their strength is not of the conquering and victorious kind. It is the burdened endurance of women who manage to pull forth some sense of dignity out of horrific circumstances.

Marie NDiaye’s pros...more

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Apr 02, 2013 Friederike Knabe rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: africa, african-lit

Marie NDiaye's Trois femmes puissantes is an intricately crafted, complex and thought provoking book. It doesn't initially feel like a novel as it comprises three 'novellas', three fictional accounts that each explores one individual's life at a crucial moment in time. Yet, reflecting later on content, writing and structure I felt that it falls into the category of novel: the stories are linked in subtle ways through imagery, peripheral characters, atmosphere and themes.

NDiaye's novel comes ali...more Marie NDiaye's Trois femmes puissantes is an intricately crafted, complex and thought provoking book. It doesn't initially feel like a novel as it comprises three 'novellas', three fictional accounts that each explores one individual's life at a crucial moment in time. Yet, reflecting later on content, writing and structure I felt that it falls into the category of novel: the stories are linked in subtle ways through imagery, peripheral characters, atmosphere and themes.

NDiaye's novel comes alive not only through its beautiful language, but also through her probing of the many contrasts and opposites that are the building blocks that make a life. Her writing is precise and detailed in conveying her characters' inner voices; yet, their thought processes are not always easy to comprehend on first reading. Her description of their close physical surroundings is highly evocative; yet, nature can be threatening, deafening, as well as calming and refreshing, once the sun sets over the dry and dusty land and the debilitating heat subsides, whether in Africa or in France.

Building on the distinctive scenarios for her well defined characters, NDiaye delves deep into the complexities of individuals who are somehow and in some way caught between West Africa and France, whether in the present, the past or a dream of a future. For each of the women at the centre - Norah, Fanta and Khady - we are compelled to ask: Where to from here? However, the stories and each protagonist's circumstances are more complex than this question suggests and over the course of the three accounts we are given part answers and more suggestions, leaving us to imagine alternatives or, maybe, not.

In the first story, for example, Norah's father retreats for the night into an ancient flame tree growing behind the house to enjoy the cooling air... Complementing her realistic descriptions of circumstances and surroundings, the author introduces recurring symbols and metaphors that indicate or hint at something beyond the reality that we and the protagonist perceive. For instance, birds and wings take special meaning and appear in all three novellas in different forms. In one, they are not just noisy companions and observers, but especially threatening in the mind's eye of the protagonist. They seem to play games with the human mind... Last but not least, at the end of each section/story NDiaye teases us with a short paragraph, a kind of epilogue, titled contrepoint that suggests a different perspective or conclusion.

NDiaye imagines her central characters caught in a kind of fault line between (West) Africa and France with all that this can represent. One underlying theme is that of individuals moving in one direction or another between France and Senegal, changing places, whether visiting/living/dreaming. Norah, a successful Paris-based lawyer, a young mother with a complicated personal life, is suddenly summoned back to Senegal by a father she hardly remembers. What does he want from her and how will they reconnect, if at all? This story appears to be inspired (or more) by the author's personal experience. NDiaye defines herself as French; her connection to Senegal and to her father is as slight as that of her heroine... however, for Norah it is somebody else who draws her back and who impacts her future moves. Fanta, a hidden yet very central presence in the second story, appears to have succeeded in bridging the two worlds while Khady... well, nothing more should be revealed. The last story is for me one of the most haunting accounts about people caught in the transcontinental fault line that I have read in a long time. Brilliant in its portrayal, devastating in its substance. Yet, Khady is the one who believes in hope, in her identity and, through her experiences, gains in self-confidence: "She hadn't really lost very much, she would think later"; she wouldn't regret the past either.

Going back to the attribute "puissant" in French and "strong" of the English title (or 'powerful' as some have suggested as a better translation) is worth an additional comment. At the surface none of the women are particularly strong or powerful. Their inner strength is only slowly revealed by the sensitive and richly imagined narrative. I see NDiaye's "Three Strong Women" as a kind of triptych: three distinct portrayals of women's experiences living between two continents and cultures. Seen together, they depict three alternatives of human experiences for women, and to a lesser degree for men, when exposed to the constant inner and outer tensions in their lives as they are trying to negotiate the fault lines.

Marie NDiaye is an award-winning author of French and Senegalese parentage. She defines herself as a French author, born and raised in France by her mother. Her novel Trois femmes puissantes, published in 2006 won the author the prestigious Prix Goncourt 2009 in France, the first black woman ever to receive this recognition.
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Feb 11, 2013 Catherine Woodman rated it 4 of 5 stars

These are three linked novellas that center on three different women with three different definitions of ‘strong’. The author grew up in France, born of a French mother and a Senegalese father, and like her, the three women have links with both France and Senegal—going from most connected to France to most connected to Africa in the order of the books. One word of caution—these are not uplifting stories. The women are tough because they have to be, not because they want to be. Worse still there...more These are three linked novellas that center on three different women with three different definitions of ‘strong’. The author grew up in France, born of a French mother and a Senegalese father, and like her, the three women have links with both France and Senegal—going from most connected to France to most connected to Africa in the order of the books. One word of caution—these are not uplifting stories. The women are tough because they have to be, not because they want to be. Worse still there are really no men in the story who have any redeeming qualities. They are selfish, brutish, narcissistic, occasionally sadistic, and not one of them is someone you would want to sit next to on a train, much less work with or have a social relationship with.
The first story is about Norah, who travels to visit her estranged Senegalese father who, years earlier, had left his French wife and daughters while taking his 5-year-old son back to Senegal. He is unbearable, both as a man and as a father. Norah learns that her father is a ruined man, and he has taken out a most callous revenge on her brother. The trauma includes small children of uncertain parentage abandoned after their mother is killed—I warned you, these are not happy stories.
In the second story, a French man fears losing Fanta, his African lover, and their son due to his financial and moral failings. We see little of Fanta beyond her graceful reticence, but we become uncomfortably intimate with her partner, Rudy, a mentally unhinged kitchen renovation salesman with a persistent hemorrhoidal itch (I will not make any Freudian comments other than to say they are obvious).
In the third, we re-encounter Khady, glimpsed earlier by Norah, who is a childless widow cast out by her husband’s family. She journeys from the relative stability of life as a West African market woman to ever-grimmer forms of exploitation. The moral is that while Europe is not a kind environment, Africa is more brutal and offers up less in the way of justice or revenge.
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Oct 09, 2012 Stephanie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

NDiaye presents three loosely linked novellas which don't seem to be about the "strong women" in the title. In the first story, Norah, a lawyer raised by her single mother in France, returns to Dakar at the behest of her wealthy, intimidating and cruel Senegalese father. Norah is summoned to defend her 35-year-old brother, Sony, who is in prison awaiting trial having been charged with murdering his father's latest wife when she broke off their affair. Norah, who has been separated from Sony sinc...more

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Aug 12, 2012 Tanya Patrice rated it 3 of 5 stars

The stories were complex, deep, dark, ugly and powerful. The last one was my favorite - brilliant, and heart-breaking, and sad, and depressing. Actually, all 3 stories are - and all 3 women are mentally depressed, emotionally exhausted, beat down & broke down ... strong for having the courage to wake up every day and live through the shit storm. They all cope in different ways, but one thing the author constantly shows us is how pliable memories are - what they hold on to, and what they bloc...more

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Dec 09, 2012 Faith rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

These are three long stories written by a French woman of African descent and in each, the split between citizenship and identity, between mother identity growing out of nurturance and father identity growing out of sperm is crucial. These are deeply said stories, remind me in that of the work of Bessie Head. The saddest is of a French man, married to a beautiful and accomplished woman from Senegal and their child. The man is tragically mired in mental illness and the suspense of watching his st...more

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Aug 19, 2012 Jan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Beautiful prose...I was amazed how much could be relayed in the confines of one sentence throughout the entire book. I had read reviews where it was stated that they found her use of language redundant...?? It must have been something other than an English translation as I found myself reading some of the paragraphs over and over again not because I did not understand the content, but I wanted to savor her words and let the feelings that they evoked in me wash over me again and again.

I enjoyed...more

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Nov 10, 2009 Caroline is currently reading it · review of another edition

Trois récits, trois femmes qui disent non. Elles s'appellent Norah, Fanta, Khady Demba. Chacune se bat pour préserver sa dignité contre les humiliations que la vie lui inflige avec une obstination méthodique et incompréhensible. L'art de Marie NDiaye apparaît ici dans toute sa singularité et son mystère. La force de son écriture tient à son apparente douceur, aux lentes circonvolutions qui entraînent le lecteur sous le glacis d'une prose impeccable et raffinée, dans les méandres d'une conscience...more

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Feb 03, 2013 David Gallin-Parisi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Tormented to the max. Three parts of this novel keep getting worse and worse. The longest, middle section is told from a male narrator's perspective, who is totally selfish and unaware of the way he's stripped strength from his friends, family, love, and neighbors. Almost funny, but always sickening. The last section is completely devastating. Ndiaye writes in an addictive, realistic style. Some people would associate the recurrence of birds, crows, and buzzards as magic realism, however the cli...more

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Feb 18, 2012 Roxane rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: feminism, french, french-female-writers-reading-chall, gender, race

This read was for the 2011 French Female Writers Throughout the Ages reading challenge, 21st century novel.

There were quite a few books I wanted to read in the 21st century category. I picked this one for several reasons, one of which being that having studied African-American literature and especially African-American women writers, I thought it might be interesting to have a look at what black women were doing in France. Second of all, the author was involved in some sort of scandal (at least...more This read was for the 2011 French Female Writers Throughout the Ages reading challenge, 21st century novel.

There were quite a few books I wanted to read in the 21st century category. I picked this one for several reasons, one of which being that having studied African-American literature and especially African-American women writers, I thought it might be interesting to have a look at what black women were doing in France. Second of all, the author was involved in some sort of scandal (at least that's what the press called it) for having spoken her mind on Sarkozy's election. Not exactly being a fan of the man himself, I couldn't help but sympathize. Also, it didn't hurt that it'd won the Goncourt in 2009.

Marie NDiaye is a woman of color struggling with her black inheritance (if there is such a thing). The lady was born in Pithiviers which is not too far from where I used to live in France and believe me, there's NOTHING exotic about Pithiviers. Her Senegalese father returned to his native country when she was a year old and since then, she's only seen him three times. In fact, Trois Femmes Puissantes is the only novel of hers in which she mentions Africa. Was I being prejudiced when I picked this book for the reasons mentioned above? Most certainly, and I clearly wasn't the only one (not that it makes it okay in any way, mind you!) as Marie NDiaye has often had to explain her strange situation in the face of her black inheritance and has even come up with the phrase "truncated mixity" which is quite interesting: Marie NDiaye doesn't feel that she can be referred to as African or even as mixed as there was no one to pass on any "African" knowledge or culture to her as she was growing up. It's an interesting perspective that probably deserves to be debated but I guess what it basically mean is: "I may be a black woman but my books are not all going to take place in Africa, I want to be free of your expectations in that regard, free to write what I feel like writing, Africa or no Africa"... which is fair enough and really something most black women writers could relate to, truncated inheritance or not.

At any rate, Africa or no Africa, I really enjoyed reading Trois Femmes Puissantes and I'm surprised that even winning a prestigious European literary prize doesn't mean that foreign fiction will be translated into English quickly. When I see foreign publishers struggling to match US or UK publications for fear that their readers will have gone to read the English edition instead of waiting for the translation, I'm always amazed and a bit sad to see that English speaking editors clearly do not have the same concerns.

But back to the book... Marie NDiaye's prose is quite distinctive. Having only read this one title, it's hard to know if it's her usual style or just a one-time experiment for TFP. I'm quite tempted by the former explanation possibility though. Her sentences are long, very long sometimes (I had to adapt my read-as-I-walk pace!). In fact, they're not so much sentences as stanzas at times. It nicely complements the touches of magical realism spread throughout the narrative and also highlight the poetic metaphors and recurring images that travel from one section of the novel to the next (as you might have guessed there are three sections to this book). These images sometimes echo the meaning they had in the previous section, but more often than not their meaning changes subtly. I'm especially thinking about the use of that of the bird which can translate into vengeance or a harbinger of death.

TFP revolves around three main characters: Norah who's come back to Senegal following her father's request, Fanta who's left Senegal years ago and now lives a mediocre life in France with her alienated husband, and Khady, the most touching of all three, who's forced into exile by her in-laws following the death of her husband.

All three stories reveal each woman's inner strength by showing that despite past and present circumstances, they are not altered at their core. They know who they are and what they are capable of and no father, brother, husband, child or other can change this. They give, take, love, are betrayed, break down and fall, die but deep down inside they retain their humanity.

While I had clear preference for Norah's storyline (I would really have wanted to read more of it), the book's overall strength resides in its diversity. These three stories are told in very different ways. While there are strong touches of magical realism in Norah's story and she's very concerned with other people's behavior and intentions, their perception of herself and also the past, Fanta's character is solely described through the eyes of her husband Rudy, and Khady is the most self-aware and self-sufficient character of them all although her story is quite a tragic one.

I really enjoyed reading this novel and would recommend it to anyone looking for something original, something touching and poetic but also strong and determined.(less)

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Dec 13, 2012 Sheryl rated it 2 of 5 stars

I am not sure if this was due to the translation or if this is simply the writer's style, but I found the consistent run-on, paragraph length sentences difficult to deal with. The book is split into three chapters that are about three women that are supposed to be somehow interconnected. The author never truly follows through with drawing these connections. The middle chapter of the book was difficult to read and never really gave the reader an opportunity to get to know Fanta. The first and the...more

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Oct 12, 2012 Kate rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, published-2000s, translated

So much build up of psychological tension in the first two parts! (I had to take some breaks). Although the third narrator's experience was by far the most harrowing, her state of mind was the calmest. I felt like something about the focus on mental state, individuality, personal freedom, etc. was particularly French, but I haven't read enough French literature to be sure. Aspect I admired the most: feeling, throughout, that NDiaye was revealing incredibly perceptive things about human nature an...more

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Jan 17, 2013 Sarah marked it as rejected

Shelves: fiction

There are three stories in this book. Novellas, really. The first is about a woman's relationship with herself and her terrible father, the second is about a sad, angry man who would like to go back to not being sad and angry all the time but can't seem to muster the energy to get it done, and the third is about I don't know what because the sad, angry man exhausted me and I quit reading.

This book was added in the optimistic flurry of book-adding that inevitably comes at the end of the year when...more There are three stories in this book. Novellas, really. The first is about a woman's relationship with herself and her terrible father, the second is about a sad, angry man who would like to go back to not being sad and angry all the time but can't seem to muster the energy to get it done, and the third is about I don't know what because the sad, angry man exhausted me and I quit reading.

This book was added in the optimistic flurry of book-adding that inevitably comes at the end of the year when everybody and his brother is compiling their "best of" lists. Probably this one was on The New York Times's list or the Atlantic's or some such organization. As a holder of a degree in English, I can see why the editor, probably possessed of similar degrees, gravitated to this one.

It's translated from the French, probably not by an American. The vocabulary isn't terribly complicated, except for the occasional, inexplicably untranslated french phrase. But the sentences are these long, tortured constructions, well decorated with parentheses and em dashes. A significant portion of them are rhetorical questions asked with all the exasperated ennui the main character is suffering.

The stories are written in the third person, but really only from the main character's perspective. There's a term for that, but I've forgotten it. It's like when you stand around narrating your own life to yourself.

She sat at the desk typing the words of a review she was sure no one would read. Was is possible that writing these reviews (and then latter going back and obsessively rereading them to herself to remind herself that she was capable of both reading and writing) was all that was left of her literary aspirations -- if she had ever had them to begin with? Or maybe she was just longing for attention. Did she just want to be loved? To feel needed and respected?

She took a sip from her bouteille d'eau, ignoring the shock of cold that ran down her throat.

She hoped whatever poor soul that did end up reading this understood that, though she had employed blockquote, she had, in fact, just made all this bit up to demonstrate a point.

Like that. In the first story, which engaged me totally, you come to realize that, yes, her father was a miserable excuse for a human being, but our loquacious narrator isn't as reliable as we'd like to think. For one thing, why does the main character keep thinking her dad's a bird? Is he really a bird or is she screwed up in the head? And then while you're thinking about that you end up having to reevaluate the relative terribleness of her father.

And then, sad ending. It's French so . . .

That story was seventy or eight pages or so. By the time I got to page twenty of the day in the life of the dude in the second story, he had just barely crawled into work in the morning. And then I thought, "life is short, your reading list is long. What's for dinner?"

Anyway. Now I'm a little bit at a loss as to what to read next. I have this illusion I will read all the physical books on my unread bookshelf at home, but one of those books is Mother Courage and Her Children and another is book three in a series I haven't got books one or two to so I don't know how great a plan that is.(less)

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Jul 19, 2012 Michal Leon rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this book in its translation to Hebrew, and that might affect me as I know it was much better received and reviewed in Israel than I the little I found here in Goodreads (There wasn't a listing of the Hebrew version). This said, I found the characters and the background very interesting and her voice of telling us about the main characters (there are three parts, one actually focuses on a man); very raw, honest, true. There was an originality and newness- for me - around the life of peopl...more

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Dec 13, 2012 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

It is brilliant writing, with an intimate psychological depth and strangeness. Certainly not a book for anyone who likes resolutions. But in the end it bothered me that all of this brilliance and skill was devoted to portraying utterly trapped women, from their promising girlhoods to their ultimate dooms. I feel conflicted about this because there is nothing untrue about it, women are trapped and trap themselves in these exact ways every day, and it's not as if we are swamped with portrayals of...more

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Oct 01, 2012 Barbara Williams rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: coo-coo-cocoa-puffs, dark-and-dreary, for-my-own-good, hipster-lovin, i-want-to-look-smart, kick-ass-heroine, saw-it-on-npr, tears, that-author-is-famous, why-do-you-let-me-down

This novel is one of the most well written things I have read in a long time. That is an impressive feat considering that I read the translation and not the actual french prose. "Three Strong Women" harkens me back to my college days, where I first read great writers like Jim Harrison; writers who are masters of their craft. These writers somehow with such lyrical intensity remind me of what humans are truly capable of.

HOWEVER, I gave the novel four stars for a reason, and here's why: The second...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Bernard James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Indefatigable inner strength. The type of quiet but continuous resolve to persevere in the face of adversity is the focus of Marie Ndiaye's latest novel. By opening a window onto the lives of her central characters, she paints three separate but consistent vignettes of pedestrian interaction that expose us to multiple levels of exasperation, despair and subsequent endurance.

"He was like that, implacable and terrifying."

This is how Norah, our first protagonist describes her father as Three Strong...more Indefatigable inner strength. The type of quiet but continuous resolve to persevere in the face of adversity is the focus of Marie Ndiaye's latest novel. By opening a window onto the lives of her central characters, she paints three separate but consistent vignettes of pedestrian interaction that expose us to multiple levels of exasperation, despair and subsequent endurance.

"He was like that, implacable and terrifying."

This is how Norah, our first protagonist describes her father as Three Strong Women takes a leaping nose dive into the heart of Ndiaye's tale. In the process we are subjected to a vivid accounting of one man's aloof and selfish nature and the degree to which his insensitivity has wreaked havoc within the lives of his children. Several themes are on display as the narration drags us through a painful re-enactment of events from Norah's past, with frequent forays into the constructs of her imagination that align so seamlessly with the present tense that we are left wondering if she simply has an overactive imagination or is in fact going mad. She is the ambitious one. She is the responsible one. It is always she who must clean up the messy spills produced by her less competent family members...and in this sense she has become trapped within the confines of an impossibly lofty set of standards and ideals.

In the next story we are introduced to Fanta; an intelligent but dispirited young woman who leaves behind a promising career teaching the children of soldiers and diplomats about the finer points of French Literature to inhabit the role of being an unemployed wife of a possessive and insecure man. What's different and uniquely unsettling about Fanta's story is the fact that we learn about her mountain of disappointment through the tortured introspection of her spouse. It is his viewpoint to which we are primarily subjected and unsuspecting, he reveals unvarnished truths about the nature of his true motivations; namely, a lack of confidence concerning his own self worth and jealousy over his wife's capacity to be loved - even as he himself is awed by the degree to which he claims to love her. He is incapable it seems, from destroying what residual affection she might hold for him as the result of his verbal abuse and a series of manipulative schemes all designed to intentionally hold her down. He knows he is killing her spirit and that part of his psyche that demands accountability cannot tolerate the reality of what he's done. At one point he likens her to "a small hen whose clipped wings prevented her from flying over the lowest fence than the brave independent human being whom he'd met at the Lycee Mermoz." He blames her for their mutual dysfunction; and yet is painfully aware that were it not for him, Fanta's potential would know no bounds.

In the final chapter of the Strong Women triptych, we are challenged to contemplate the depths of one woman's remorse as she recognizes - painfully late and after the fact - just how blessed and fortunate she once was. After being cast into a state of economic and spiritual privation, Khady must come to grips with the fact that her obsessive focus on obtaining the one thing she didn't have, has ended up costing her the pleasure of experiencing the magnitude of everything else that had been within her grasp. A catastrophic turn of events tears her down to the point where she can no longer subsist on her own. Suddenly dependent on others for support, she is subjected to frequent taunts and random acts of cruelty by those who despise and take advantage of her condition. Khady must now learn how to operate and survive in the context of a painful awareness of her depravation - while at the same time, not allowing herself to become wholly defined by it. Fiction that celebrates the collective strength of Black/Brown women in and of itself is not a remarkable phenomenon; but the way in which Ndiaye specifically chooses to do so - through glimpses of the terrifying fragility of her subjects - is what makes the haunting eloquence of Three Strong Women so impactful. As readers, we are not treated to explicit acts of triumph on the part of the novel's heroines but instead, are asked to hold their hands as the author lays bare their suffering and most vulnerable moments so that we too might know what it feels like to stand tall in the face of so much adversity and pain.
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Apr 26, 2013 Andrea rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, french-lu-en-français

J’ai l’impression que tout le monde autour de moi (si ce n’est pas la France entière) hait ce livre. Des qualificatifs tels «prétentieux », «ennuyant », «zéro », «illisible », et carrément «chiant » ( !) s’entendent dans les discussions et se lisent dans les blogs. Eh bien, tout ça n’a fait que d’aiguiser ma curiosité : est-ce que ce roman peut être mauvais à ce point ? Bonne petite soldate que je suis, j’ai décidé de le lire moi-même ; histoire de voir ce qu’il y avait dans ce bouquin qui a pro...more J’ai l’impression que tout le monde autour de moi (si ce n’est pas la France entière) hait ce livre. Des qualificatifs tels «prétentieux », «ennuyant », «zéro », «illisible », et carrément «chiant » ( !) s’entendent dans les discussions et se lisent dans les blogs. Eh bien, tout ça n’a fait que d’aiguiser ma curiosité : est-ce que ce roman peut être mauvais à ce point ? Bonne petite soldate que je suis, j’ai décidé de le lire moi-même ; histoire de voir ce qu’il y avait dans ce bouquin qui a provoqué une réception si négative.

A ma surprise, je l’ai bien aimé ! D’accord, il y a un style particulier qui rebute au début – ces fameuses longues phrases qui se prolongent au-delà de ce que mon petit cerveau est capable d’absorber facilement – mais il y a aussi des phrases ‘normales’. En fait, chaque pensée constitue une phrase, et chaque phrase un paragraphe. Elle n’aime pas non plus les points-virgules, alors on doit naviguer à l’aide de seuls virgules et quelques parenthèses (ouf). Mais une fois habituée aux tics de ponctuation, j’ai pu entrer dans le rythme et apprécier le fond.

Et là, on ne risque pas de s’ennuyer si l’on aime pénétrer dans la têtes des personnages. Ce roman est tellement intériorisé, centré sur les pensées et perceptions des protagonistes qu’il est parfois étouffant, d’autant plus que ces femmes (et hommes) dégagent un sacré paquet de malheur, malaise et mal-être. Entre les névroses (ou carrément psychoses) de Norah, la paranoïa galopante de Rudy, le mari de Fanta, et la souffrance extrême de Khady Demba, on voit s’étaler toute une cargaison de mécanismes de survie face aux hostilités réelles, imaginaires et/ou auto- générées. Les défaillances mentales qui guettent Norah et Rudy font parfois irruption sur le corps avec une intensité surprenante, et ces manifestations humiliantes sont décrites à la manière de NDiaye , voici deux exemples :
« Elle sentit alors avec consternation qu’elle était en train d’uriner sans s’en rendre compte, c’est à dire, que la sensation lui parvenait d’un liquide tiède le long de ses cuisses, de ses mollets, jusque dans ses sandales, mail il lui était impossible de le contrôler et la perception de la miction même lui échappait. »
Et puis :
« Cependant mille piqûres d’épingle lui vrillaient l’anus. »

D’autres auraient peut-être parlé de « pisser » ou même « crise d’hémorroïdes, », (ou pire) mais elle est peut-être simplement incapable de vulgarité, la petite Marie … Mais prétentieuse ? Il est vrai qu’elle déploie un vocabulaire parfois recherché, et alors ? J’ai compté trois fois le mot « nimbé » (le 2ème fois j’ai craqué pour le dico) et c’est vrai qu’elle aurait pu choisir « auréolé », mais pourquoi se limiter aux seuls mots de tous les jours ? (Et en plus j’ai appris un joli mot, mais qui sait quand je vais pouvoir l’utiliser, …)

Un livre un peu difficile, (forme et fond) et qui a ses défauts. A mon humble avis, la 1ère narrative semble inachevée et la 2ème beaucoup trop étirée. La 3ème est réussie.
3.5 étoiles, mais j’aime arrondir à la hausse !

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