Incest

At last we have Christine Angot’s book ‘Incest’ in a good English translation. When first published in France this definitely gained notoriety and created controversy, as well as dividing opinions on whether it is literature, or just a shock piece. And lest we forget Angot is known as the French queen of shock.Some may immediately be put off with the style of this which according to the author is a performative work. At times sentences hit you more as bullet points and show a certain angst. Being autofiction as well as incorporating meta-fiction, although short this book does take in a lot of subjects, although at times it just brushes lightly over the top of them.As we start this the narrator is in a lesbian relationship, and then we see her mental collapse and the reasons behind her behaviour, which centres on the incestuous relationship her father had with her in her teen years.It has to be admitted that it feels like this book is out to shock, and perhaps will hit a certain resonance with some readers, but it also feels dated in the way it goes about doing this and makes you wonder if the inspiration for this wasn’t from the likes of Miller, etc.For me personally I found some of this such as the mental illness aspect good in the way it was written and the narrator exploring this, but other aspects of this book I just found repetitive and not that well thought out. Of course this is very much a Marmite book and this will provoke different responses from different people.I was kindly provided with a review copy of this by the publisher via NetGalley for reviewing purposes.

Very French, very self-indulgent, very pretentious, very tedious. A rambling stream-of-consciousness piece of autofiction that sets out to shock but doesn’t. Repetitive and all over the shop, it describes the author’s breakup with her woman lover and links her extreme distress to her incestuous relationship with her father. Fair bit of graphic detail, lots of angst, much raw emotion laid bare, all of which failed to engage me at even the most basic level.