Simone de Beauvoir: She Came to Stay

November, 2014

A fictionalized recount of the trio that existed between Olga Kosakievicz (to whom the book is dedicated), Sartre and de Beauvoir and narrated from the latter’s point of view.

Fay Weldon in an afterword for this edition of the book writes

It quite takes your breath away with its particular mixture of pain, excitement and description …

This line struck me, as it resonated sympathetically with my own response to the book, though I would go further and say that I found the book suffocating. The fraught dynamic, where one of the trio’s mood can instantly swing from self-satisfaction to distress, triggered by a minor gesture or off-the-cuff reply by another of the trio, whether the intent was innocent or malicious; this continual drama I found frustratingly unfathomable.

Although de Beauvoir’s unfliching protrayal of the trio is very admirable, I found reading the novel a bit of a slog.

Aside: Poor print quality.