Subjects Not-at-home: Forms of the Uncanny in the Contemporary French Novel—Emmanuel Carrère, Marie NDiaye, Eugène Savitzkaya by Daisy Connon (review)

CONNON, DAISY. Subjects Not-at-home: Forms of the Uncanny in the Contemporary French Novel—Emmanuel Carrère, Marie NDiaye, Eugène Savitzkaya. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. ISBN 978-90-420-3005-3. Pp. 295. $83. Connon links the three novelists in her title through the elusive concept of the “uncanny.” The feeling of estrangement that accompanies uncanny experiences highlights a sense of alienation from the seemingly familiar. Connon explores how these experiences are often due to fractured family structures and the complications of modern life, and lead to a repositioning of the self in relation to the material world. This is clear in the plots of several novels by each author examined by Connon. She argues that what makes the manifestation of the uncanny different in the contemporary French novel is that an evolution has occurred in the notion of the strange or unfamiliar: in earlier narratives the uncanny comes mainly from external forces, whereas in these texts, it issues forth primarily from the seemingly familiar—everyday objects and encounters, the family, and the self. She thus invites a reexamination and comparison of realist texts, texts of the Nouveau Roman tradition, and other texts that make heavy use of descriptions of ordinary everyday objects, to contemporary French novels that use such objects as sources of anxiety and estrangement. This is a rich topic and Connon paves the way for scholars interested in further investigation. In the first chapter, Connon confronts theoretical and etymological considerations of the term, relating it to the idea of alienation from chez soi. She discusses Freud’s blending of the terms heimlich and unheimlich, a confusion which itself points to the slippery boundaries created between real/unreal, fact/fiction, self/other when the uncanny “defamiliarizes” the familiar. Connon analyzes well-known studies of the uncanny, including that of Todorov, and how the term has become conflated with other notions such as the fantastic, the supernatural, the Gothic, magic realism, and horror in literary and film texts. In this introductory section, the author also presents views on the uncanny within the realms of psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and feminist studies. She examines these perspectives on the uncanny both for what they can elucidate about the term and its application to contemporary French narratives, and for their various shortcomings. Thus, Connon covers much ground while acknowledging the ultimate difficulty in pinpointing an exact definition of the uncanny. She does nonetheless consider the term from many angles, providing a useful overview for her readers before she delves into the novels of the three authors. Connon devotes the next three chapters to excellent and thorough close textual analyses of several novels including Carrère’s La moustache, La classe de neige, and L’adversaire, NDiaye’s La sorcière, Rosie Carpe, and Autoportrait en vert, and Savitzkaya’s En vie, Marin mon cœur, and Fou trop poli. Connon argues that these contemporary writers recognize that the “real” is an unstable concept that must be reconstructed through the lens of an unstable fragmented subject. While each author does not make use of the uncanny with exactly the same psychic effects— Savitzkaya lessens the anxiety-provoking result of uncanny experiences in his novels—all are shown to portray everyday objects and family relationships as sources of estrangement. Connon explores the idea that in rendering the familiar strange, the authors ultimately raise ontological questions for both the stories’ protagonists and for the authors themselves. Connon’s arguments are especially cogent when she explores autofictions as she notes that the question of “who am I?” is mixed with spatial and temporal questioning since the writing self tries to position him/herself in relation to his/her text and its “real” life sources. The text Reviews 749 itself becomes the mystifying elusive object for the author in the ultimate experience of the uncanny. Connon concludes by inviting continued reexaminations of the uncanny in other contemporary texts, as well as in cinema and art. Rider University (NJ) Mary L. Poteau-Tralie FERRAND, NATHALIE. Livres vus, livres lus: une traversée du roman illustré des Lumières. SVEC 2009:3. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7294-0957-5. Pp. viii + 282. £70. Chaque année, le...