Adele: A Novel
Flanagan, Mary
ISBN 10: 0393045471 / ISBN 13: 9780393045475
Published by W W Norton & Co Inc, Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., 1997
Bibliographic Details
Title: Adele: A Novel
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Publication Date: 1997
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Good
About this title
Synopsis:
The mystery of Adele infuses this erotic novel, which starts in decadent 1930s Paris and ends in today's brash London.
Celia Pippet, founder of a feminist magazine, impulsively steals a bizarre artifact from the British Museum. Joined by her friend Martin, a filmmaker, and
American academic Tamara, she flees to Bez in southern France to escape detection and to pursue the trail of the beguiling Adele. Fifty years before,
Adele had been rescued from Bez by Dr. Jonas Sylvester. He brought her to Paris where she captured the city's attention with her alluring beauty and air
of secrecy. When Sylvester brings over sister Blanche to look after Adele, he is not prepared for the love between them nor their escape from him. He
takes his revenge.
Moving between Blanche's life with Adele and Celia's search for clues into that life, the stories converge in Bez where the three friends discover
Blanche's existence and Adele's true, if unbelievable, identity. The effects of the revelation are shattering-Adele's erotic power extends beyond the
grave, melding past and present into a single reality. A provocative and original novel by an accomplished literary writer who steps beyond the
boundaries of what we know as male and female.
Review:
Adele is an involved curio questioning treasured notions of civilization, innocence, and the natural. The book opens in medias res with Celia Pippet, a
feminist magazine publisher, stealing something from the British museum. The specimen drawer, however, contains not one mummified--and disgusting-
-object, but two. Celia and an old friend, Martin, and a larger-than-life academic, Tamara, then head off with their booty to the south of France in order to
right an old injustice, which they intend to link to the campaign to end clitoridectomies. Sound broad, and unlikely? Mary Flanagan more than mitigates
this possibility by making her knowing perpetrators well aware of their outlandish situation: "Oh please, darling. That's so Perils of Pauline," one protests.
Fifty years before, a Parisian gynecologist had rescued a girl from near death at the hands of vicious villagers. This child, Adele, uniquely agile and
undeniably oversexed, becomes an obsession for the doctor, his sister, and, it seems, half of brothel-going Paris. Is she retarded, an abomination, or a true
innocent? (Judging from some of the sexual contortions she gets up to, this last would seem unlikely, but not entirely in Flanagan's inventive narrative.)
Unfortunately, Dr. Sylvester, the girl's protector, turns out to be vile, proprietary, and far too interested in fashionable notions of eugenics (it is 1936).
When Adele transgresses once too often, he performs a clitoridectomy, or so Celia, Martin, and Tamara think. Throughout this novel of lascivious twists
and turns, Flanagan stays several steps ahead of her crusaders and makes the grotesque moving. Though some readers will be revolted by Adele, more
will be surprisingly touched.
