All The Way

Marie Darriuessecq, translated by Peggy Heuston

Text Publishing

Otago Daily Times, April 27th 2013

Although we are ready to accept the idea that teenage boys are completely preoccupied with sex, there is a reluctance to admit that the same holds true for girls. Yet the intensity of my physical and emotional feelings are the only aspects of my teenage years that I have been unable to purge from memory. I’m not sure which impressed me more about Marie Darrieussecq’s latest novel, All The Way: the accuracy with which she captures the reality of female adolescence, or her bravery in presenting what is at times a confronting depiction of a young woman’s awakening sexuality.

The story opens with 10 year old Solange watching with horrified confusion as her drunken father runs naked from the Carnival, the sight of his penis a shock in a world where her knowledge of sex comes from whispered conversations with her friends and furtive study of the Larousse dictionary: “n. (lat. sexus, from secare, to cut).  Each of the two complementary adult divisions of a species, the union of which guarantees reproduction”.  The same night she gets her first period, the combination of events marking the end of her childhood and the start of a journey of discovery that sees her trying everything she can think of to in order to satisfy both her physical desires and her desperate need for the love that her family, particularly her father, are unable to provide. 

Darriuessecq is not afraid to break social taboos (Solange’s relationship with her middle-aged neighbour and long-time babysitter Monsieur Bihotz are disturbingly inappropriate, yet his feelings for her are heartbreakingly genuine). Nor does she flinch from the utter selfishness that accompanies adolescence. This only serves to lend Solange’s character an honesty that make her all the more sympathetic and believable as a narrator.

Sad, funny and challenging, All The Way will not be to every reader’s taste, but it is a story well worth reading.

https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/no-flinching-story-girls-growing