Undercurrents

by Marie Darrieussecq, Linda Coverdale (Translator)

A mesmerizing new tour de force from the internationally acclaimed author of Pig Tales--the writer The New Yorker hailed as France's "best young novelist." Ever since Pig Tales (described by Booklist as "Animal Farm meets The Metamorphosis") became an immediate bestseller in France and was optioned by the great French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, Marie Darrieussecq has been an international literary superstar. With her stunning follow-up novel, My Phantom Husband--an immediate #1 bestseller--Darrieussecq continued to earn critical acclaim. Undercurrents is her greatest triumph to date. A mother and daughter mysteriously disappear to a deserted seaside town in Spain, but the main character emerges as the sea itself, as Darrieussecq evokes the varied moods and rich palette of the ocean with poetic genius. From seemingly simple events, Darrieussecq deftly plunges the reader into a sensual, surrealistic literary experience grounded in--yet worlds away from--day-to-day reality. Called "truly inspired" by Elle and "gripping" by Le Monde, Undercurrents fulfills and exceeds our expectations of this talented young author.

Genres: Fiction, France, French Literature, Mira, Novels

114 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1999

About the author

Marie Darrieussecq was born on January 3, 1969. She was raised in a small village in the Basque Country.

While finishing her PhD in French Literature, she wrote her first novel, Truismes (Pig Tales) which was published in September 1996 by Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens (POL), who have published all her subsequent novels as well. After the success of Truismes, Darrieussecq decided to quit her teaching position at the University of Lille to concentrate on writing her novels. Her first husband was a mathematician, her second is an astrophysicist. She gave birth to a son in 2001 and to a daughter in 2004.

She endorsed Ségolène Royal's candidacy during the French Presidential Elections of 2007.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an unusual novel, rather brief; there is no dialogue, the characters are not named and this gives the whole an underwater feel. Darrieussecq’s descriptive powers are impressive; who would describe a window as being “glossy with sunlight”? Her novels have a recurring desertion theme. In this one a woman leaves her husband, taking her daughter and driving to close to the Spanish border, on the coast. Other characters include the husband, the private detective he hires to look for them, a swimming instructor and the young girl’s grandmother.
The reason for leaving is never really explained and the novel itself is very much focussed on the sea. There is a feeling of distortion, like looking through water. The novel begins with a description of the sea:
“It's a mouth, half open, breathing, but the eyes, nose and chin are no longer there. It's a mouth bigger than any mouth imaginable, rending space in two, expanding it... The noise - the breathing - is tremendous; you climb up the dune, and space explodes”
Darrieussecq resists the temptation to judge or analyse her characters and allows the reader to merely observe and giving a vivid sense of brightness and heat. The setting is the area the author lived in as a child and the reader does get a sense of the familiarity the author has. Darrieussecq says herself:
“To the west, the Atlantic, to the north, a forest, the east, Europe, and to the south, a border with Spain. It was very rich for a kid's imagination.”
She goes on to say that her work is haunted by a dead brother she never knew. He died before she was born and she didn’t know about him until she worked out for herself he had existed. There is absence and disappearance in her novels, originating from the sense of this she felt as a child without knowing why.
It’s interesting and clever stuff and has been compared with Woolf, especially The Waves. I’m not entirely convinced by that but it is an interesting read

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Running away: we all feel the itch from time to time, making it an irresistible literary device. This is a simple story of disappearance told in an opaque way, with little exposition or explanation. A woman leaves home with her child, and her husband and mother attempt to track them down. The point-of-view flows between characters without warning. There is no dialogue, just the observations and experiences of each character, only a couple of them even named, rolling past like the waves at the seaside town where the woman and her child are staying. It is a gauzy novel, the plot nearly subsumed by the vastness of the sea and sky, the motion of the natural world, the ephemerality of everything in life.

A simple wrist movement, the steering wheel turning this way instead of that, the changing landscape, the kid silent with surprise, uneasiness, and the scenery persisting stubbornly and marvelously (or even: without your realizing it) in its strangeness—he understands all that, and the kind of emptiness of those alterations, which one must drive past, reject, going farther, until one finds something truly empty, completely new.

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

A woman picks up her daughter in the family car, gets on the highway to the coast, and departs from her life entirely. They find themselves in an off-season seaside town, renting a room that will soon be given over to tourists and spending days on the half-populated beaches. Nearby, the sea cliffs into which the town is tucked are unstable, ever in a state of collapse. As with her second novel, also of disappearances, Darrieussecq's world is a state of uncertainty and absence, though here of a more distanced sort. Emotions poke through, but they have to fight a haze of unknowing. Motives may never be clear, though you can imagine the sort of thing. Details of place and perception spark with such hyperclarity that all context and logic is lost in raw feeling. A brief novel unfolding in the uncharted spaces between the real and unreal, the plausible and the alien.

[Jean Ra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Para los que leímos Marranadas y buscamos en Respirando bajo el agua una experiencia similar nos aguarda una ligera decepción. Darrieussecq parece que no quería etiquetarse en el frasco de las plumas chocarreras y corrosivas, así que para este tercer libro se enfrasca en una novela sin toda esa imaginería fantástica y por contra encara una escapada a las playas del País Vasco francés por parte de una madre y una hija.

En el nivel más literal esta escapada se lee como la crisis existencial de una madre, que sufre de algún tipo de cefaleas y una gran agitación interior. En otro plano es una parábola sobre una mujer que tenía ciertos conflictos sin resolver del pasado, cosa que obstaculiza su completo desarrollo mental y al final (no desvelo gran cosa) se ve como "sigue" a un grupo de gente mayor que pasa frente a ella, lo que nos lleva a pensar que ha realizado la transición.

Se trata de uno de esos libros escritura por encima de trama, es decir, que la escritura es muy meticulosa, la prosa está surtida de un vocabulario muy amplio, empleado con destreza, de forma que la lectura resulta caudalosa y envuelve, pero los hechos son escasos, pequeños avances por cada capítulo o segmento del capítulo. El desarrollo de este periplo por la playa de la madre y la hija se intercala con el viaje del detective que las debe encontrar y por ahí también me pareció que se relata cierto capítulo de la juventud de la madre.

Supongo que para los que adoren sumergirse en el frondoso lenguaje, primero en las metáforas sensoriales, que abundan en los estímulos de la luz y el agua, luego ya, hacia el final, en las figuras geológicas (nueva alusión a la "antigüedad"), seguramente lo habrán disfrutado y disfrutarán, claro. Yo admito que esperaba algo más de relato, no he encontrado la narración especialmente estimulante o sugestiva, en verdad es de esos libros que antes parecen aparecidos para enriquecer una carrera profesional que no un vehículo para expresar algo muy relevante. El ejercicio de estilo tiene muchísimo más peso que no el despertar emociones, que en mi caso han sido muy vagas, prácticamente inexistentes. De modo que Respirando bajo el agua debe ser un título reservado a paladares de los refinamientos estéticos y poco más.

[cass krug · Rating 3 out of 5]

undercurrents is a showcase of intricate, descriptive language. this book demands you take your time with it. it’s reminiscent of a rich oil painting - darrieussecq is layering colors and textures to create an impenetrable portrait of the ocean.

there is no characterization, dialogue, or backstory. we’re unsure why the woman at the center of the book has run away from her husband and mother, taking her daughter to a seaside town to start over. it feels almost as though the reader has been dropped into the middle of the sea with no context - very disorienting.

at only 114 pages, i thought i would be able to lose myself in this book over the course of an afternoon, but it proved to be a tougher, longer reading experience. the language was so dense that i could only read it for short periods of time. i really loved the concept of this, but the execution proved to be a bit challenging for me. darrieussecq is obviously very skilled with language and she requires your full attention. i have her nonfiction book sleepless on my shelf and am curious to see how it differs from this novel.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ocean is everywhere in this story, overwhelming the slimmest of plots and characterizations: there's a mother, a child, a husband they've fled for unknown reasons to an unnamed resort town. But for a novel so undeveloped in conventional ways, it was surprisingly satisfying. Early on a character describes teaching himself to look at maps in reverse, as if the ocean were solid and the land were negative space, and that notion stuck with me as I read. Everyone in this novel is adrift, between old lives and new, between home and away, or between the sand and the horizon. Once my familiar expectations of a novel had been upended, cutting me loose as a reader, that drifting felt so natural and whole that I wondered whether other, more solid novels are just weighed down by their details.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This slim book is a sensuous mystery that plunges the reader into an inexhaustible ocean of impressions and strange facts. The facts are sprinkled with no apparent pattern so the reader becomes like a child stumbling upon unexpected wonders. Character and plot remain out-of-focus no matter how much a reader squints.

Breathing Underwater may require more than one reading, for the characters swim in words that impart the mental laziness of endless summer. The narrator is as difficult to pin down as the wind. First one breeze of person, then another.

Initially, this bothered me. I wanted to know who was observing, who was experiencing what, and who was taking care of the child. Stuck in an idea of story, I wanted to clearly separate the mother, the child, the father, the grandmother, and the great fish, and to know what was going on and why; but after awhile it ceased to matter, and my desire rolled out with the tide.

The scant boundaries that defined characters were languorously erased with the waves and I felt the hot sun of the seaside, unconfused by props or people. Then, after I had released all expectation, I experienced the mirage of the author’s intent. The wish for motive, connection and explanation were no more, leaving only the beauty and rhythm of the moment.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

"She take of her shoes, shakes them, pours out the
glistening grains. The humidity has made the sand stick
together; her heels pull out clumps, cubes. The night is
black and gashed with foam. The waves fall from high in
the sky and the moon tumbles in slivery glints that shear,
crackling, through the shadows. If you stretched out your
hand, straight ahead, you could just touch them with your
fingertips."

"The fluorescent sea seems to have absorbed the day's
energy to melt it into shining, lacquered waves. The sea
rises and falls, slowly, without haste, strong in its mass,
full of octopuses, whales, hurricanes, shipwrecks, bestowing
on the city the edge of its presence. It makes her feel grown-
up to be here, alone on the seashore; to stay here, at the
precise place where land and sea come together."

[Lucie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bien, mais je n'ai pas réussi à my plonger vraiment intensément comme je l'avais fait avec "Truismes". Cependant, le style est toujours présent, et si vous aimez la mer, ce livre vous plaira de part ses jolies métaphores.

[Fay Van Kerckvoorde · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Het geluid is enorm, bulderend, maar dat is vooral omdat je het niet verwacht, je loopt het duin op, je worstelt om je voeten van de helling omhoog te trekken, een tijd lang bestaat er niets anders voor je dan dat zuigende vacuüm onder het zand, en in één klap explodeert de ruimte, je kijkt op en de top van het duin is naar beneden opengespleten, je ziet iets als twee reusachtige, gespreide armen, maar dat is het eigenlijk niet, het verwelkomt je niet, het is meer dat je geen keuze hebt (…). Het is moeilijk de rand van dat ding te zien, uit te maken waar de grens zich precies bevindt, op welke afstand. Eerst ben je tegen het duin op geklommen, je hoorde het geluid al, maar je voelde nog niets op je gezicht, dat naar het zand gebogen was, in de rosse geur van het zand, toen werd het geluid groter, alsof het doorliep tot achter je hoofd, een geluid van driehonderdzestig graden, terwijl de zee daar voor je ligt, in je gezicht blaast, het zweet van de klim van je gezicht veegt, een knisperend blazen, zilt maar niet vochtig, gedroogd door de uitgestrektheid van het nog nazinderende zand.”

3,5*
De taal is weelderig, sprankelend, sprakeloos mooi (en prachtig vertaald door Mirjam de Veth). Er staan ook zo'n originele poëtische vondsten in (bv. 'De takken knipten het donker in stukken, het bos sloot haar in.')
Helaas verdwijnen sommige taalpareltjes door de ingewikkelde vertelstructuur: de gedachten van de personages worden constant afgewisseld, terwijl zij niet van elkaar onderscheiden worden door een streepje witruimte. Ik vond het best frustrerend om pas na drie zinnen te beseffen dat ik opnieuw in een ander hoofd zat. Hierdoor dook ik nooit helemaal tot in de diepte van het verhaal.
En tegelijkertijd heb ik ook genoten van dit bijzondere boek. Het is eentje waar ik nog lang aan ga denken en wil herlezen.

[Felicity · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the brevity of this novel, I found myself at times floundering in the wash of words. (In this respect, the original title of Le Mal de Mer, i.e. seasickness, seems more apt than the choice of the translator.) Even in translation, the prose ebbs and flows between precision and vagueness. While the unnamed woman who has deserted home and marriage (though not her daughter, and not the proceeds of her bank account that finance her flight) appears to act decisively, perhaps irrevocably, her impulse to do so remains unfathomable. Many young mothers dream at times of cutting loose, but few will choose to sever domestic ties as decisively as she. If she has been seduced by the refracted light and sirenic song of the sea, she cannot continue indefinitely to breathe underwater before coming up for air. In the penultimate paragraph, she emerges into a defamiliarising airport lounge, the expansive silence 'thickened by breathing', periodically broken by electronic chimes and a voice 'saturated with air'. From the 'fragmented atmosphere of the place [she] is leaving, amplified and made more distant than a world beyond the seas by the indifference of empty loudspeakers' she takes flight, her destination unknown. A disorienting read, perhaps the product of the author's sleepless nights.

[Peffer Dimitri · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lamentable. Je n'ai pas accroché du tout au style complètement décousu de M. Darrieussecq. C'est très rare que je ne finisse pas un bouquin, mais là c'était vraiment trop pénible et j'ai renoncé après 50 pages. Allez, zoup, à la poubelle!

[Nicholas Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb. The writing is some of the best that's out there--just so good. It's handled with a lightness that works very well with the book's voids (nameless he's and she's, no dialogue). It's a stone...something to sit with and hold. And I think I'll be holding onto it a bit too.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mood book, observation of detail creating mood - excellent.

[Rêve Carnevali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Une langue qui peut apparaître difficile d'accès, mais un ouvrage touchant

[Mariarose · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Marie Darrieussecq. She forces her reader to truly be present in the text. She writes beautifully. She has a fresh voice and the book is unlike anything you've ever read...just pick up any book she's written and you won't be disappointed.

[Elusive.Mystery · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange story about a mother’s impulsive choice to leave her spouse and take their young child with her. In French.

[Jon S. Prue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful prose that demands the reader to sift through in order to really enjoy it. In a good way, haunting.

[Steven Felicelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

good writing, strong concept - but found myself zoning out - a very good novel : on paper

[Adam Cherson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I rate this book a 3.46 on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being best.

[SASKIA · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW! JE SUIS CHAUD PATATE!

[Dayna]

This is a note to self that this is #19 in Bookmarks Directory (originally coming from my Bookmarks Folder)

[adi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book's British title - in the states it is being sold as "Undercurrents" - read it!

[Memmis · Rating 2 out of 5]

En dos semanas no voy a recordar nada de este libro.