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Astragal

Albertine Sarrazin,

Patsy Southgate,

Patti Smith (Goodreads Author)

3.68 · Rating details · 1,475 ratings · 150 reviews

As if the reader were riding shotgun, this intensely vivid novel captures a life on the lam. "L'astragale" is the French word for the ankle bone Albertine Sarrazin's heroine Anne breaks as she leaps from her jail cell to freedom. As she drags herself down the road, away from the prison walls, she is rescued by Julien, himself a small-time criminal, who keeps her hidden. Th ...more

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Paperback, 192 pages

Published April 26th 2013 by New Directions (first published 1965)

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Apr 28, 2019 ☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ rated it liked it

There is something: in the search for freedom, in breaking one's feet in a hurry to get out (and what a hurry, 7 years at 19?), in looking for life, hurrying to get it all... Still, I sort of felt it was all a bit underdeveloped. We got vignettes where a real book could have stood. ...more

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Oct 14, 2015 Steven Godin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: france, non-fiction, paris, fiction

Written by Sarrazin while serving time behind bars this semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of Anne, who after jumping to freedom from prison fractures her ankle and is found by the side of the road by Julian (who also happens to be on the run), they journey together, quickly form a bond, and romance soon follows. This was a cool and sexy read, also very charismatically French. It also captured a certain style similar to that of a Jean-Luc Godard movie. Tragically Albertine Sarrazin died ...more

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Sep 10, 2015 Bjorn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: summer-of-women, france

19-year-old Anne - old enough to take her pants off, old enough to go to jail, legally still a child - jumps off the 10-metre wall of the jail where she's serving a 7-year sentence. Smashes her ankle, crawls to the highway, is picked up by a small-time crook with a motorcycle who helps her hide with various acquaintances as she recuperates as well as she can, having to depend on others. This is love. This is freedom. This is never being able to walk right again.

Astragal is many things. Largely a 19-year-old Anne - old enough to take her pants off, old enough to go to jail, legally still a child - jumps off the 10-metre wall of the jail where she's serving a 7-year sentence. Smashes her ankle, crawls to the highway, is picked up by a small-time crook with a motorcycle who helps her hide with various acquaintances as she recuperates as well as she can, having to depend on others. This is love. This is freedom. This is never being able to walk right again.

Astragal is many things. Largely autobiographical, to take the most obvious, tragic (and in a way least interesting) fact: Sarrazin - orphan, mixed-race, abuse victim - wrote the book, as well as the follow-up, in jail, and eventually married the guy on the motorcycle before dying at age 29. One of those books you should read before age 25 for the best effect, probably. A product of its time, for sure: "To live outside the law you must be honest", Week-End , all that jazz; a dream of "freedom" that's already starting to look frayed at the edges, asking the question "...of what? To what? For how long?" The astragal of the title is the ankle bone (specifically the one called "leap bone" in Swedish). The novel is named for the price she pays for freedom: the ability to run, to dance, to drive a car, to walk barefoot, leaving her free to be tied to the same world that saw her end up in jail in the first place. As she limps from hiding place to hiding place, falling in what love is there, trying to unpause, to become.

Of course, none of this would matter much if it wasn't also another thing: Really fucking well-written. Anne narrates the whole thing in a style that never seems like it's trying to be either literary or "street", just is, a jumble of detailed, unflinching but never too deliberate impressions and thoughts and memories that keep the story tumbling along in one long breathless monologue, even during the long stretches where little actually happens beyond bones stitching themselves back together. (No wonder a young Patti Smith loved it and gushes about it in the foreword.) It's not a nice story about how love or freedom or cameraderie fixes everything, or even anything. It's just a book that, somehow, keeps getting lighter even as the things it bears try to weigh it down. ...more

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May 14, 2016 Barry Pierce rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, read-in-2016

When I picked up Astragal (1965) by Albertine Sarrazin the cover told me that it is Patti Smith’s favourite novel. For future reference – never to ask Patti Smith for book recommendations. The author’s biography is far more interesting than the book she wrote. Sarrazin had a rough childhood which led to her to a life of crime and punishment. She wrote this novel whilst in jail and died aged 29. Astragal is a semi-autobiographical work which follows Anne, a 19 y/o girl who escapes from jail. Duri ...more

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Mar 27, 2014 Thom rated it really liked it

Albertine Sarrazin’s novel Astragal, originally published in 1965, is full of a free-wheeling, self-mythologizing attitude rare in modern fiction, but which evokes an era which thrived on heroes who took control of their own fates, seeking complete personal freedom even if it meant living beyond the law - an attitude which was a contributing factor in the conflicts of 1968. Albertine herself never made it to that date (she died in 1967 of complications following surgery, after a life spent in an Albertine Sarrazin’s novel Astragal, originally published in 1965, is full of a free-wheeling, self-mythologizing attitude rare in modern fiction, but which evokes an era which thrived on heroes who took control of their own fates, seeking complete personal freedom even if it meant living beyond the law - an attitude which was a contributing factor in the conflicts of 1968. Albertine herself never made it to that date (she died in 1967 of complications following surgery, after a life spent in and out of prisons and reformatories), but the novel still reverberates with her energy and spirit.

Albertine was born in Algeria in 1937, and was abandoned by her parents as a baby. Adopted and bought to France, she was an intelligent child, particularly good at Latin and Maths, but was abused by a member of her new family and placed in a reformatory school. This marked the beginning a life marked by transience and conflicts with authority. Escaping from the school, she travelled to Paris and worked as a prostitute, before being imprisoned in 1953 following a hold-up. She escaped from this prison, too, before meeting her husband. The two stayed on the run for the next decade, communicating by letters when one or the other was locked up. These are the experiences which went into the creation of the semi-autobiographical novel Astragal, written in prison in 1964, and published after her release.

Astragal is narrated by Anne, a stand in for Albertine herself. The novel opens with her escape from jail, during which she fractures her ankle badly. She is picked up at the roadside by a man on a motorcycle, Julien. She immediately sees that Julien is a fellow outlaw, recognising ‘certain signs imperceptible to people who haven’t done time; a way of talking without moving the lips’. The opening passages are filled with a sense of possibility; ‘the sky,’ she says, ‘had lifted at least thirty feet’. As the couple drive away, she announces that ‘a new century begins’.

This idea that one might meet one’s lover by chance, at the side of the road, go away together on the back of a motorbike via a series of safehouses and find your identity on the open road, is a common Sixties motif, referenced by everything from Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde and A Bout de Souffle to Natural Born Killers. Astragal, though, shows the experience from the point of view of the woman, frequently abandoned in a series of hostile or confining environments while her man goes off housebreaking. Held back by her damaged ankle, Anne spends her time on the run washing shirts, sewing ties and fending off pimps while Julian disappears for weeks at a time. She worries about being a liability to him, and about how she is going to pay for her board with the various opportunistic hosts Julian finds for her.

Albertine’s prose is lyrical and impressionistic, filled with images of rebirth. Anne’s initial escape takes place at Easter, and she knowingly refers to her ‘resurrection’ after spending three days in a hospital bed. The narrative recognises that rebirth is not an easy process. While her healing ankle suggests development, or growth, it also holds her back, physically. In the first house they come to, Julien places Anne in a child’s bed. Here, she is nursed, and begins the process of learning to walk again. She doesn’t have the agency of an adult, struggling against the constraints she is placed under and the behaviour she has learned (‘prison still surrounded me: I found it in my reflexes, the jumpiness, the stealth and the submissiveness of my reactions… several years of clockwork routine and constant dissembling of self’).

More important than this, though, is the mental effect of freedom: ‘suddenly I realised how much each cell, each drop of my blood meant to me, how much I was cell and blood, multiplied and divided to infinity in the whole of my body: I would die if I had to, but all in one piece’. In her introduction to this volume, Patti Smith, who encountered Astragal as a young woman thanks to a cheap edition in a Greenwich Village book stall, asks ‘would I have carried myself with the same swagger, or faced adversity with such feminine resolve, without Albertine as my guide?’ It is her powerful sense of self-definition, of control over her destiny, which gives Anne such strength. As a poor woman, on the run, many of the people she encounters are hostile, but she faces down individuals like the surgeon who treats her ankle but never ‘deigns to notice that, surrounding bone, there is a woman, an uncarvable being who works and thinks’.

She is unwilling to compromise her sense of self in any way; in Paris, she begins earning money again, street-walking, and considers sending some of her earnings to Julien, who is in prison at this point. His family object, as she is not his wife and they dislike her association with their son, so she drops the idea completely, declaring that ‘to send Julien money under another name doesn’t interest me’. Gradually, Anne becomes more independent, but still continues to wait for Julien, believing that they are fated to be together, even as her lover becomes increasingly unreliable. Several times she almost breaks away, travelling to the coast, but she is always drawn back to the Parisian underworld they both inhabit.

The narrative moves frequently between the present day and flashbacks, employing the kind of jump-cuts seen in a Godard film. Albertine never goes full stream-of-consciousness, but Anne’s interior monologue is brilliantly captured. She is also able to nail characters with a well-chosen phrase, such as Anne’s preening suitor, who is dismissed with the line ‘even the hairs of his moustache seem to have been planted’. Albertine Sarrazin is a rare literary voice, and Astragal is a compelling view of the counter-culture of her time, retaining a powerful sense of urgency half a century on from its creation. ...more

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Jun 06, 2015 Vanessa rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle

Astragal follows Anne, a 19 year old girl who escapes from prison by jumping a wall and ends up badly breaking her ankle as a result. The rest of the story follows her and Julian, the man who saves her from the roadside, as she travels around France trying to keep out of the clutches of the law, as well as the various people who put her up.

I honestly thought I would enjoy this more. It is very well-written, but almost too well-written for the simplicity of the story - at times I felt like Sarraz ...more

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Jun 22, 2013 mwpm mwpm rated it really liked it

Shelves: novels-novellas

Watch my review! ...more

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Jan 05, 2018 Stacia rated it liked it

Shelves: 2018, europe

She has a very fresh, immediate voice in this book, a semi-autobiographical look at "Anne" who leaps from a third floor to escape prison, shatters her ankle, is randomly (& luckily) picked up by a minor crook (Julien) before her escape is discovered & wanders between hideouts, waiting, healing, & reverting back to her old life (yet at such a young age) of prostitution & thievery. There is freedom of spirit here, but also a lot of hiding, looking over her shoulder (not wanting to be caught), & wa ...more

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Sep 12, 2012 Randall Wood rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A surprisingly lyrical and well told narrative, and a compelling individual as well. It's refreshing to hear about a life on the lam told in the first person. It may have been the effect of the translation from the French (which was excellent) but this story rings with a narrative quality - a rhythm - I haven't come across elsewhere. Sarrazin has the knack of making the obvious understated, and bringing out the detail with a dry and self-effacing humor. I think I'll remember this one for some ti ...more

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May 05, 2014 Tosh rated it it was ok

Shelves: books-bought

Albertine Sarrazin had a remarkable life, and i love the look of her, and the Patti Smith introduction to this book is great, but..... I'm not that crazy about "Astragal." I think it's a so-so novel. Clearly written by a young person, it does capture the essence of me or us vs the world - but, in the end of the novel, I really don't care about the lead character or the others in the novel. By no means is it terrible. But for me, it goes from eyes to brain back to eyes - and I will forget it tomo ...more

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Sep 29, 2019 tortoise dreams rated it liked it

An interesting novel by an author with an even more interesting bio. The reader becomes immersed in the interior monologue of the narrator as she breaks her ankle escaping from prison (on the first page). She slowly heals, the road to recovery consisting of hiding out with various people, leading to simmering tensions that are mostly covered over by politeness. This is a book for patient readers, willing to attend to the smallest details as there's little plot, little action, & one can only desc ...more

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Jun 04, 2013 Lee Razer rated it liked it

Shelves: france, crime-fiction

Autobiographical novel of teenaged French-Algerian girl, her escape from a youth reformatory prison, relationship with a petty criminal who picks her up, and carving out of a temporary life on the Parisian streets. Though she is tough and "a stick of dynamite" to quote Patti Smith's notable introduction, the novel is largely an account of things that happen to her; she demonstrates only a precarious ability here to direct the course of her life.

In the first half of the story this is due to the f Autobiographical novel of teenaged French-Algerian girl, her escape from a youth reformatory prison, relationship with a petty criminal who picks her up, and carving out of a temporary life on the Parisian streets. Though she is tough and "a stick of dynamite" to quote Patti Smith's notable introduction, the novel is largely an account of things that happen to her; she demonstrates only a precarious ability here to direct the course of her life.

In the first half of the story this is due to the fact that her escape resulted in the shattering of an ankle bone, "l'astragale", which is the sort of thing that can happen when you let go of a high wall and find that, "The sky had lifted at least thirty feet" as you now lay on cracked pavement. Picked up by the stranger Julian on a nearby road, he becomes her guardian and her lover. Hiding her first at his mother's house, as any good son would do, he later shifts her around to other hideouts owned by minor criminal acquaintances of his. Eventually Anne's ankle adequately heals, she grows tired of this living arrangement, and she strikes out on her own as a prostitute and thief.

Her move for independence in the latter part of the story is undermined by her dependent love on Julian. Only he can make her happy now. Forced to spend six months in prison on a minor charge, when he is released Anne hands over her money and future to him. She soon weeps, however, when she finds out that he has another woman, and it was she who was symbolically there to meet him at the prison gates. Julian swears to end things with this other woman and commit to Anne, but before he can do so her past catches up to her and she is returned to jail.

The novel's prose is a winding road, here clever and here needlessly obfuscating. Not possible for me to say how much of this is Sarrazin's original and how much the translation. One thing for certain is that this new edition could have used a solid proofreading; while it looks like spell-check caught everything it could, incorrect words sometimes pop up in the text, for instance:

"In the latter case, lied just have to arrange the tables and dust a little" (p.34). Think that should be "he'd just have to...", yeah?

"Julien makes suit of that..." (p.105). Nah, he made sure of it.

"I can't hop, or eyed balance myself..." (p.109). Or even balance herself. ...more

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Jul 07, 2020 Emily rated it did not like it

It being the most unprecedented year yet, I have decided to take this opportunity to work my way through my untouched collection of books. Having no real idea which are worth the read vs not, this is the year I finally read them all. This untouched collection of books includes Astragal (1965) by Albertine Sarrazin. I had higher hopes for this book. The cover reads "As alive as a Godard movie, this lost classic of 60's French literature is back" and includes an introduction by Patti Smith. After It being the most unprecedented year yet, I have decided to take this opportunity to work my way through my untouched collection of books. Having no real idea which are worth the read vs not, this is the year I finally read them all. This untouched collection of books includes Astragal (1965) by Albertine Sarrazin. I had higher hopes for this book. The cover reads "As alive as a Godard movie, this lost classic of 60's French literature is back" and includes an introduction by Patti Smith. After finishing the book, I feel confident in reinforcing that Patti Smith is 100% cancelled. Not only for being racist, but also her taste in books.

This is a semi autobiographical novel, and I found that the wikipedia page about Sarrazin was far more intrigueing than the story (sorry not sorry). I think it was very well written which is why I will give it two stars, but the story as a whole feels extremely underdeveloped. I finished reading this for the sake of finishing it, which is unfortunate because I feel like it had the potential to be BETTER. I didn't feel fully informed while reading, I kept having the feeling that I was missing out on important bits of information - yet how would that be possible, because I read all of it? I think Sarrazin left out pieces that the reader would have benefited from because she was writing her own story. This is probably easy to do, but it did a disservice to the connection the reader would develop to the characters and story. The narrative was in Anne's point of view the whole time and I never felt truly connected to her. Julian felt like a passing ship in the night, a figment of Anne's imagination. It led me to believe they wouldn't end up together....but clearly they did...so why isn't there better character development?

Overall this was disappointing. I felt like I was listening to the summary of a story, and only receiving little glimmers and bits of it. I did like the way it ended, i'll give it that. But I wouldn't really recommend reading it if you haven't already started it. ...more

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Feb 03, 2015 Ariella rated it liked it · review of another edition

I came across this book after my sister saw it in a bookshop and showed me because the face on the cover looks like mine. The face is the author's and, truly, the lure of this book is the story of the women behind it--French-Algerian, abandoned, adopted, imprisoned. In the opening scene, Anne (Albertine Sarrazin's nickname) escapes from the window of a prison, fracturing the astragalus bone of her ankle when she jumps. Sarrazin's description of the pain and, indeed, all her descriptions, are int ...more

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Mar 05, 2015 Carol Switzer rated it really liked it

I enjoyed this little gem very much. The author's youth comes through so well it feels refreshing and alive notwithstanding the very troubling setting and circumstances in which the protagonist lives. Funny to have read this on the tail of Suspended Sentences a dreamlike sequence describing similar characters in a very different way. ...more

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Jun 20, 2016 Rachel rated it liked it

Work people: Please stop recommending me books...especially when they are immediately available from the library. Andy, you too! (Caliban's War is in the queue!)

I never really liked the name Ann. Or Anne. (Sorry Mom!) But now I can see how it could be sexy. ...more

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Oct 03, 2014 Nicole rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ooh-la-la

Perhaps if I had read this book at the age of 21, I would now be a little more like Patti Smith and a little less like me.

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Apr 25, 2019 Juliana rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: witmonth

My review: https://theblankgarden.com/2019/04/29... ...more

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Jun 21, 2017 Mind the Book added it · review of another edition

Postgymnasial, Godard-artad "The guy gets out his Gauloises and gives me a light."-prosa, som tyvärr inte hade något att säga mig (nu). Ångrar att jag inte läste på franska, men ville så gärna ta del av Patti Smiths passionerade förord:

"In 1976, as I traveled the world, I carried 'Astragal' in a small metal suitcase [...] and the same black jacket I wore with careless defiance on the cover of 'Horses'. It was a Black Cat paperback edition..." ...more

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Jul 27, 2017 Viktorija B. rated it really liked it

First of all - one of the best introductions to a book I've ever read. such a warm, loving way to start it. and second - it's so easy to just live Anne's world. her words and her speech are so well translated, I could hear her words in my mind as I read and as I didn't. I kept her in my thoughts even when the book was put down. very atmospheric, almost claustrophobic in the beginning - then free and airy. I'm definitely going to talk about this book for years to come. ...more

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Jan 03, 2020 Connor rated it really liked it

A solid 3.5/5 for me. I think it’s very similar in tone, pacing, and theme as an early Godard film. There were sections I liked, particularly the ending, but I found the middle of the book dragged a bit. It had elements of noir but without the pulp that drives them. Much more of philosophical and purgatorial feeling than I anticipated.

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Aug 14, 2014 Wally rated it really liked it

Shelves: french, adventure, girl-hero, adult, doorway-character, unshelved-review, crime-and-punishment

Anne, a young French woman, escapes prison by jumping over the wall. Two seconds of freedom, then she smashes her ankle bone – the astragalus of the title. She drags herself down the road and is picked up by Julien, another small-time criminal, who shelters her at his friends’ roadhouse, a place where she can hide and heal in anonymity. The break is bad, though, and she must go to the hospital and endure several intense surgeries as well as the endless boredom of hospital rooms. She and Julien f ...more

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Oct 03, 2016 b e a c h g o t h rated it liked it

Shelves: recommended-to-me, pretentious-classics

Recommended by one of my favourite writers, Patti Smith, as one of the books that made her who she is today so obviously I was really looking forward to reading this.
Albertine writes so so well... Almost too well? She managed to complicate a very simple story by writing so intensely.. Which I have yet to decide if it was beautiful or exhausting. I LOVED how she finished each chapter with a phrase so poetic it almost makes you gasp. But plot-wise... I struggled to love it like Patti did.

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Apr 15, 2016 Audrey Pf added it · review of another edition

A charming book. I felt such an intimate voice from the protagonist Anne. Beautiful prose. The madness of love, and obsession, passion and frustration. The quote on the front of the book is true - very much like a Godard film - in the best way. Patti's introduction, which I read after the novel, is endearing and spiriting, and I enjoyed it just as much as the story itself. ...more

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May 06, 2013 El marked it as to-read

I'm not at all ashamed to say that I want to read this book because of this article by Patti Smith.

Suck. It. ...more

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Jul 26, 2014 Olja rated it really liked it

Shelves: recommending-to-friends

I love the book more because of the irresistible charm of Albertine Sarrazin and because of her short, unhappy life, full of passion and hope for it not to end so abruptly...

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Nov 12, 2020 Bill Keefe rated it liked it · review of another edition

Reading this in French was laborious task; paragraph upon paragraph of challenging vocabulary and street argot. I bring this up because I think the work it took read it to the end pretty much dashed any hope of writing a strong, positive review.

What I can say is that the book strikes me as being influential as much because of when it was written as how well it was written but frankly I would have no problem if some more capable reader disabused me of this notion. It was dark. The protagonist was ...more

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Nov 27, 2017 Sidsel rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017, broken-hearted, 20th-century, library-books, dark-humour, european, girls, love, relationships, growing-up

"I'd been locked up too young to have seen much of anything, and I'd read a lot, dreamed and lost the thread. For me, reality was distorted like everything else;.."

This book was a whirlwind of emotions. A book about too much emotion in too little space. The book feels a bit claustrophobic a times because everything is happening all the time, Anne has so much going on all the time, and never gets to catch her breath.
But I liked it, I liked the 60's beat-y vibes, I liked her overwhelmingly teenag ...more

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Sep 06, 2019 Malcolm Connell Wardlaw rated it it was ok

I bought this book because I'd never heard of it and it looked interesting. It was interesting, in a way, being something of a period piece from early 1960's France. It's an autobiography of a late-teen girl who breaks her ankle jumping from a prison wall. She is helped by various petty criminal groups, whilst her broken ankle is not treated as she dare not go to a hospital. Eventually she is admitted under an alias as the younger suster of an acquaintance. She undergoes an operation to remove t ...more

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Jan 14, 2021 Xena rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

It’s not often I read books that I relate to. I love her bitterness, humor, and reality. Brilliant expressions, and her descriptions.. my goodness, the talent! No wonder it is Patti Smith’s favorite book. It tells a love story between two people who ran away from jail. It is a strange love story... one that teaches you about love but at the same time warns you.
She is in love with memories. Anne is always going back, remembering her ex-lovers. We meet a character who we understand very well but ...more

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About Albertine Sarrazin

Albertine Sarrazin

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Albertine Sarrazin (17 September 1937 — 10 July 1967) was a French author. She was best known for her semi-autobiographical novel L'Astragale.

Born in Algiers, Algeria, she was quickly abandoned and put in the care of the social services, being then christened Albertine Damien in honour of the saint of the day she was found on. She was then adopted by a family that moved her to Aix-en-Provence. Wit ...more

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“I would like to stay like this, lazy, warm, in the silence where only our regular breathing can be heard, without ever having to make gestures, speak words which sell us out and betray us; this moment is real and alive, I stretch it into eternity...” — 12 likes

“You can't wash away overnight several years of clockwork routine and constant disassembling of self.” — 2 likes

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