Simone de Beauvoir: The Woman Destroyed

I want to tell you about the book I finished just today – Simone de Beauvoir: The Woman Destroyed. One book tells three stories. 

The first story tells the story of a woman in her sixties who is gradually realizing that her relationship with her husband is no longer what it was many years ago, her new creation merely repetitions of what she wrote earlier and her adult son’s decisions forcing to feel betrayed by one of your closest people.

I thought that lately I have been reading books on the subject of aging, trying to adapt to fleeing years, realizing that something has already been lost, that something will be no longer achieved, and that some things are no longer as enjoyable as they once felt. Maybe because of this random repetition, I was no longer impressed by reading this piece, but I already felt what accompanied other pieces – openness and realism that could not leave me indifferent.

If the first story is told in the standard way of storytelling, the second – Monologue – presents a completely different style of writing. The protagonist expresses her pains about the suicide of her daughter and the condemnation of those around her; a son who, after divorce, settled with his father; the mom with whom the relationship was always complicated. The shortest, hardest to read, the least touching, though all the flow from the narrator is emotionally strong.

The content just caught my attention. I am curious to read about distorted relationships. The protagonist learns that her husband was unfaithful to her. The daughters are already grown up and have left home, so the woman must accept these news alone. Manipulation, persuasion of the self and the others, many questions, doubts, lies – the character was a bit annoying me by her choices and thoughts while reading, but this is probably natural given how the story evolved after the revealed news.

I read, I was nervous, and there was no way I could retreat. The psychological portrayals of the two main characters are very well presented, and the situations created reveal the sides of the characters that have never been seen before.

While reading the first two pieces, I thought it was worth lowering expectations so that there would be no major disappointment when I closed the book, while reading the third, I got a lot of excitement and emotion. Three stories, three different storytelling styles, and three women who lose their lives.

© Fortune, 2020