'TELLING LIES' by SOPHIE MARCEAU
Sophie Marceau. The name might ring a bell, as she is perhaps better known for her acting talents rather than her writing skills, having starred in 'Braveheart' and Bond-escapade 'The World Is Not Enough.'
'In my family they think of reading and thinking as wasted time. They stamp holes in their time noisily as if it were a train ticket, endlessly repeating the same gestures, doing and undoing,' which seems stupid in the world according to Marceau; she realises that 'the world is revealed to us by books, not by housework.'
The writing - in this, her debut novel - is frank and self-revealing throughout� though, in keeping with the novel's title, you never know how much of what she's saying is lie-tinged. On the subject of her sex life, Sophie admits 'I made love too young. I hardly dared look at the fragile body which swelled and furrowed mysteriously before me, still not understanding the currents that flowed within it, before it was violated by a curious outsider. Desire is like submission; you have to humiliate or be humiliated, abandon all your good manners and any respect you might have had for the other, to sweat, pant, groan and open yourself up. Pleasure is dirty.'
Sophie proves she can be philosophical to a P. However, the bulk of 'Telling Lies' reads like one long dream, full of surreal moments that are barely tied together. There is no story to follow as such, yet the wistfully abstract style of writing manages to remain captivating: 'First there is the light, white hands crying in the silence, words venturing out, a rasping breath moaning towards life, towards death. I moisten their mouths, leap inside their bellies, I disturb them. Then, as the rain streams from the red-edged sky, the enormity of it is like an echo of nothingness. 'The rest is silence,' Hamlet says as he dies. I would like to act until the day of my death. The curtain falls.'
What excuse there is for a story follows the lead character, a French actress: working very little, waiting for the big-time and fretting in the meantime. The character will surely be based in bit-parts on Sophie herself and her life, and I'm sure some of 'Telling Lies' is in fact autobiographical - but it's never obvious if it is or it isn't.
Lovelorn and worn down by the stresses of life, she's forever daydreaming and wondering 'what if?' 'I could go on a long journey. Or I could isolate myself, go to the country, up there, in the hills and walk, write and think. But everything changes when the Monday morning telephone begins to ring.'
Aside from her aimless moping about Paris, the mid-section follows her on a trip to America whilst pursuing an acting job. Nothing changes in regards to the writing style mind you, and what you ultimately have is essentially a collation of snapshots of her paranoid, insecure thoughts and feelings. She is an idealist and seems obsessed with finding a decent, honest man to settle down with (in a Moulin Rouge-esque moment� 'At the theatre one evening a guy came over with an open book and asked me to write what I thought about the purity of feelings. I wrote in capital letters: LOVE'), yet by her own admission, it's nigh impossible to believe a single word she says.
It's only 106 pages long, is eminently readable and sure is original. Her writing style can't be knocked. It's just that if you want a good old story to get to grips with, you ain't gonna find it here.
(Steve Rudd)
ISBN 0-75381-431-5 (PHOENIX)