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Lili Is Crying

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Title: Lili Is Crying
Author: Hélène Bessette
ISBN: 9780811239660
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2025
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Condition: New
New from the publisher

Fiction 1642182

Publisher Description:
Lili Is Crying, Hélène Bessette's debut novel, explores the fraughtness and depth of the troubling relationship between Lili and her mother Charlotte. With a near-mythic quality, Bessette's stripped-back prose evokes at once the pain of thwarted love--of desire run cold--and the promise of renewal. Lauded by critics on its initial publication in 1953 for its boundary-pushing style, Lili Is Crying transformed Bessette into a cult author in France. Moving and maddening in turns, the characters are so trapped in their own cruelty and sorrows, but in its spareness it feels true: "Show me a woman who has actually chosen something." Championed by Raymond Queneau, then an editor at Gallimard, Bessette's novels were hailed for their experimentation, unusual economy of expression, rarity, strange humor, and their sheer vivacity.