Skip to product information
1 of 1

New Directions

Governesses

Regular price $12.95 USD
Regular price Sale price $12.95 USD
Sale Sold out
Shipping calculated at checkout.
Title: Governesses
Author: Serre, Anne
ISBN: 9780811228077
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2018
Binding: Quality
Language: English
Condition: New


Fiction 1210762

Publisher Description:
In a large country house shut off from the world by a gated garden, three young governesses responsible for the education of a group of little boys are preparing a party. The governesses, however, seem to spend more time running around in a state of frenzied desire than attending to the children's education. One of their main activities is lying in wait for any passing stranger, and then throwing themselves on him like drunken Maenads. The rest of the time they drift about in a kind of sated, melancholy calm, spied upon by an old man in the house opposite, who watches their goings-on through a telescope. As they hang paper lanterns and prepare for the ball in their own honor, and in honor of the little boys rolling hoops on the lawn, much is mysterious: one reviewer wrote of the book's "deceptively simple words and phrasing, the transparency of which works like a mirror reflecting back on the reader."

Written with the elegance of old French fables, the dark sensuality of Djuna Barnes and the subtle comedy of Robert Walser, this semi-deranged erotic fairy tale introduces American readers to the marvelous Anne Serre.