Our Lady Of The Flowers
by Jean Genet
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 501)
Read in June, 2008
I was 25 when I first read this book (after reading Edmund White's excellent "Genet" biography), and my world was turned around. Fiction could be part-autobiographical, part-masturbatory fantasy, part-magical realism (or surrealism) , prison drama, high camp & a poetic tour-de-force. I re-read the book a few more times in my twenties, and have not returned to it until now. At first, I was annoyed by the general lack of narrative direction. By Genet's seeming lack of focus to no...more
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Read in June, 2008
This was hard, but there is an unmistakable art in Genet's writing--a sensuality as it should be: consumed with textures and scents. I got lost and am certain I did not always understand but the book left me impressed with Genet's eye for details, humor, and poetry. Like poetry, it should be read more than once; it's blunted characters and blurred identities fall like sunlight or shadows on whatever you as a reader bring. This is not a celebration of gay or criminal lives, but a perspective t...more
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Read in September, 2007
I do enjoy being quite ignorant of 20th century literature. It allows me to go stumble upon a masterpiece such as this book without knowing how deeply moved, delighted, broken-hearted it will leave me. This particular edition has a wonderful introduction by jean-Paul Sartre, which I read when I was halfway through the first time (I could not help but read it twice consecutively), and I recommend this approach to anyone else who has not been acquainted with the work of Genet. Sarte gives wonderfu...more
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The cover of my edition of Genet's tale of homosexual's and thieves hales it as a masterpiece of eroticism and depravity. While that may have been true in the forties when the book was written, we live in an age where such stories just aren't as shocking. Instead I found this book to be almost more of an account of the kinds of spirituality that still haunt the edges of society where such notions as religion have seemed to cease to apply, and as such it was quite moving, and for the most part ...more
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Part of why I love this book is that while I read it I kept imagining Jean Genet sitting in a cell by himself, going crazy, writing on pieces of toilet paper and compulsively whacking off. I suppose I should just love it for the writing, and I love the writing too! This book is so unlike any other I've ever read. The structure is completely non-linear. He bounces from his fictional characters to his memories from before his imprisonment, to his impressions in solitary confinement, back to hi...more
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Read in January, 1996
I read a friend's copy of this. I didn't know much about Genet when I read it. His prose is florid to say the least. This novel and Miracle Of The Rose, which are two of my favourite Genet works, is about life in and out (but mostly in) prisons, with a strong homoerotic subtext. Probably the best novel about gay fantasy/life prison life. Todd Haynes's movie Poison used some references from Miracle I think. I was very impressionable at the time so yeah it definitely fired up my imagination. LOL.
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A gay man's experiences in a French prison cell in the 1940s and the sensual fanasy world his mind escapes to. Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers is one big fever-dream of sexual storytelling that was ground-breaking for its time and is a justly admired classic. I must admit though that I appreciate the importance of this work, and the story of how it came to be written and published, more than I enjoyed actually reading it. It was just too out there for this buttoned-up reader.
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Read in June, 2008
recommends it for:
erotica lovers
Unique erotica, like no other book ever written. A convict in a French prison posts glamorous magazine pics of men on his cell wall and daydreams sex fantasies of them intermingled with fantasies of his fellow inmates.
This is no gay porn Walter Mitty, though; you find yourself inhabiting an alternate universe much like Kenneth Anger’s short films made during the same period (World War II Nineteen Forties). Read this and feel your head explode!
This is no gay porn Walter Mitty, though; you find yourself inhabiting an alternate universe much like Kenneth Anger’s short films made during the same period (World War II Nineteen Forties). Read this and feel your head explode!
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Genet is a genious in his sensual descriptions of ruthless men. His attraction to crime and death equals his love for masculine beauty and sex. He wrote this book in jail, and in more than one way, this book released him.
The first time i read it I was about twenty and it actually shook my (literary) world. He was so different from anything I'd read before (and i'd real lots of books before) that I compulsively read and reread it.
The first time i read it I was about twenty and it actually shook my (literary) world. He was so different from anything I'd read before (and i'd real lots of books before) that I compulsively read and reread it.
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The best prison novel ever! Well, actually it's a piece of erotica from a genius writer. Jean Genet is one of the greats, because he can express suffering, joyment, and a world that is extremely eroticize. To go into his world is like having a feverish dream and realizing that your world that you work in can not possibly exist. Genet's world is much more real, dirty and very very beautiful.
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Read in October, 2007
genet is a naughty naughty boy: daring, brash and lasciviously moral; a thumber of noses, a lover of bold solidarities. at times gorgeously poetic, at times tediously cruel and esoteric. sartre called our lady of the flowers an epic of masturbation, but to me this book resists definition. what is freedom, what is pleasure? genet might quip, a killer hard-on, but there's a lot more to this book than that.
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Read in January, 2000
recommends it for:
anyone brave
This was the first book that our book club read.I was totally astounded that we had anyone come back for another book.It is very graphic,dark and slightly disgusting but Genet is a genius and a man way beyond his time. He wrote mostly while in prison for being gay in France.
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this book is DENSE. I just couldn't cope with it when i started it. So now it's sitting on my shelf, waiting for me to someday reapproach him. Maybe I prefer Genet as character (see "Saint Genet" by JP Sartre) than as author...
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Read in August, 2007
This took me somewhere I've never been. I can't say it's a place I'd really like to spend a lot of time in, but it held my interest, and I enjoyed Genet's conscious living of the fiction, if that's an appropriate way to put it.
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This is why they call him "Saint Genet." This visionary book makes your soul grow as Genet meditates the link between art, abjection, and compassion. Herein lies the true message of the Gospels and the Buddha.
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Read in January, 2004
I have read this a few times. I love Jean Genet. There is something about the way he finds beauty in the most reviled parts of humanity which brings me back to him.
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the first 40 pages of this book is the most erotic, genderless experience i've ever read. for me, it was a crucial book in the investigation of gender and desire.
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bursts of escapism reined in and let out by a body in a cell... the western magazine covers on the walls come to life at night and make rough love to you
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Read in December, 2007
My copy has a quote on the book jacket that runs along the line of "a classic of such magnitude that any comment on its merit would be presumptuous... "
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Read in January, 1990
Beautiful prose - madness - crime - prison life - poetry of a most brutal quality - genius - torment - elegiac - more human than bozo the clown...
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