Excess and Transgression in Simone de Beauvoir's Fiction

Alison Hollands innovative book fills a gap in Beauvoir studies by focusing on the writers frequently neglected novels and short stories, LInvite, Les Mandarins, Les Belles Images, and La Femme rompue. In illuminating the density and rich complexity of Beauvoirs style, Holland challenges the often accepted view that Beauvoirs writing is flat, detached, and controlled, revealing, rather, that her prose is frequently disrupted and inflected by forceful emotion. Holland shows that excess and transgression are intrinsic qualities of the texts, and argues that Beauvoirs textual strategies duplicate madness in her fiction. Hollands reading of Beauvoirs fiction demonstrates the extent to which Beauvoirs fiction undermines an ideologically patriarchal position on language. Her study is important not only for its re-evaluation of Beauvoir as a fiction writer but for its contribution to the wider debate on madness and literature.