Cher connard by Virginie Despentes (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Cher connard by Virginie Despentes Ann Williams Despentes, Virginie. Cher connard. Grasset, 2022. ISBN 978-2-246-82651-4. Pp. 352. In today’s world we can’t survive without sorting through information. What is true? What is significant? From the start, this novel gives readers ample opportunity to hone critical skills as Virginie Despentes deploys her talents as a writer and critic of contemporary society. Social media and email host the attempts at communication that constitute this book. It begins with an Instagram post where Oscar, one of the two principal narrators, comments on how poorly a certain famous actress has aged. This elicits an acrimonious email response from the latter, Rebecca, the second main narrator. Her salutation “Cher connard” (8) begins their personal exchange. We learn that Oscar, forty-three, and Rebecca, now fifty-ish, grew up in the same grim part of Nancy and he’s reaching out to her. Oscar is a novelist of some renown, but he feels desperately alone. He’s struggling with addictions and recovery and is also facing public criticism for sexual harassment. Little by little, Rebecca begrudgingly warms to this self-centered man and reveals her own addictions to heroin and to public acclaim. The limited acting opportunities she now faces are a source of anguish and she, too, feels she has nowhere to turn. The Covid-19 lockdowns make this virtual interaction even more significant, and Oscar and Rebecca find consolation in their exchange. The third narrator, whose feminist blog keeps this work from being a purely epistolary novel, is Zoé Katana who angrily tells her side of the harassment story and presents her views on how the world needs to change. She gives voice to important social problems and inequities, but Despentes dedicates fewer pages of the novel to Zoé’s fight than she does to Oscar and Rebecca. We learn from email exchanges that Zoé appears in real life in Rebecca’s world and then again in Oscar’s, but these encounters feel somewhat like devices to move the story along. One might see Zoé’s immutable character as little more than a foil that highlights the personal growth of the other two. For them, compassion replaces animosity and by the end of the novel it’s clear that they are friends and will replace their virtual relationship by meeting in real life. From a literary perspective, the lack of differentiation between the narrators’ voices might throw off a reader who wants to engage with distinct characters rather than with an author. Incantatory phrases without punctuation express emotion, and while this flow signals the depth of feelings, it often makes all three characters sound alike. Is this a stylistic weakness or a strategy to show how similar all of us are despite what we often see as fundamental dif ferences? Oscar and Rebecca both come to understand that they cannot be defined by just one aspect of who they are. When Oscar says, referring to his role as harasser, “Je suis ça, aussi” (277), it is a useful realization for him and is perhaps a reminder for all of us that we are, indeed, the sum of all our parts. [End Page 236] Ann Williams Metropolitan State University of Denver (CO), Emerita Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French