The 3 best books by Virginie Despentes

If it were a matter of writing for the sake of writing, Virginie Despentes I would not be a writer. Because there are those who live and create with the intention of raising awareness as a foundation and essence. Only in this way does this French narrator continue to turn her particular black-on-white imaginary to the fascination of some and resentment of others.

It is understood that art must start from these premises to move and transmit towards the desired approach. And perhaps literature is sometimes off the hook of that idea. But just as in one way or another Bukowski, salinger or until Marquis de Sade made transgression of literature, Despentes thinks the same towards its necessary narrative implosion of the world.

Perhaps the intention of Virginie Despentes is the vindication. Because after a shocking aesthetic and a narrative that precisely achieves that commotion, we discover a liberating spirit. Because halftones never transcend, fuzzy intentions blur. You have to write for all and Virginie does.

Top 3 Recommended Novels by Virginie Despentes

Fuck me

In reality, in a world like the literary one you have to arrive making noise, like an elephant in a china shop. In the case of Juan Manuel de Prada with his novel «Coños» and for Despentes with his work «Fóllame». And it is that as the wise man would say, everyone moves away when someone determined advances.

A prostitute and a porn actress meet at dawn by chance at a station after committing their first crime. Manu wants to flee to Brittany and threatens Nadine with a pistol to take her in his car, but the young woman barely resists, she is pleased with the idea. This peculiar crush starts an extreme and violent road trip in which the two young women will cross France, a getaway dotted with murder, sex, pornography and alcohol.

Fuck me is the controversial novel that, when she was barely twenty-five years old, brought Virginie Despentes to fame, a story in which hardboiled literature meets the most nihilistic punk. It was translated to some thirty countries and its author directed the film adaptation, a film that was censored in France and other territories. This grunge version of Thelma and Louise is a stark tale of two women with fierce humor and almost loving friendship. His story is a grenade; a bomb that will blow minds

Fóllame, by Virginie Despentes

Vernon Subutex 1

Over time, the Vernon Subutex trilogy will be seen through the eyes of a premonitory work, in the style of a dystopia already materialized and adhered to human civilization like a tumor in the conscience. Characters moved by dangerous inertia, alienated and emptied by the subtle veil of the most imposed well-being. Symbols overloaded with the gold work of our most elaborate social lies.

Alex Bleach, fallen angel of French rock, has died of an overdose in a hotel bathtub. Quite a disgrace for his fans, but especially for Vernon Subutex, a former record salesman in his fifties who still retains the magnetism of yesteryear.

Bleach was not just a friend, he was the person who paid his rent, and his death has thrown Vernon into precariousness. With no job, no money, no family, and no home, Vernon's life seems doomed into a spiral of misfortune. He only has the footage that Bleach himself made and that he left in his apartment as a will.

Vernon Subutex 1

Vernon Subutex 2

To respect an order and to approach a singular work with guarantees, I have selected Vernon 1 before. But surely this second part is the one that best develops the idea or where it is best complemented by a more complete and complex staging, extended like a gloomy one shadow over all social class of that France taken as a standard point of analysis.

The harsh reality has already shaken fully in the consciousness of our protagonist. A beaten and cornered guy who only has to assume his destiny between fleeting drug deliveries and ravings or take everything that comes his way as blind revenge for despair. Only that life is that whim that one day awakens a glow of hope. And it is that when everything is lost there can always be a new game to lose.

Vernon is still on the street and has lost all contact with the real world. Buttes-Chaumont Park, northeast of Paris, is now his new home, and there he lives with other homeless people, unaware that he has become something of an internet celebrity and that his former friends, a motley group of socially very disparate individuals desperately seek it. Everyone wants to know the recordings that rock star Alex Bleach left in his hands before he died.

Vernon Subutex 2

Other interesting books by Virginie Despentes…

Dear asshole

The fate of these times is a rampant bipolarity that makes its way between personalities duplicated in real lives and social networks. Doctor Jekylls with lucid thoughts, rational beings who buy bread while waiting in line patiently and their respective Mr Hydes who sweep everything away in special networks. For some haters, for various postures many others... The point is that in this exhibition the most disturbing truth can be extracted from so many orphans and shipwrecked lives of their own stranded in the ostracon that are social networks.

«I have read what you posted on your Insta account. You're like a dove shitting on my shoulder: a disgusting slut. Buaá buáá buáá I'm a little shit that no one cares about and I bawl like a chihuahua to see if I'll get noticed. Long live social networks: you have achieved your fifteen minutes of glory. The proof: I am writing to you. Rebecca, an actress in her fifties with a career in decline, responds with these harsh words to Oscar, a forty-something novelist who has just insulted her on social media. Upon realizing that they already knew each other, a correspondence is born between them in which they will lay down their weapons. Both will remember the past and their love for drugs, until Oscar is accused of sexual harassment by his former press officer.

A novel of rage and consolation, Dear Cocoon is an incisive analysis of our society through the point of view of a canceled man, a forgotten actress and a young accuser, in a story that shows that friendship can confront any human weakness. In a novel that is revolutionizing French literature, Despentes displays all the aspects of #MeToo, feminism, social networks, addictions and what it means to grow old in our society.

apocalypse baby

Valentine, a troubled teenager living in a wealthy family in Paris, has disappeared on her way to school. To find her, her grandmother hires an inexperienced private detective named Lucie Toledo, who begins the desperate search in the company of La Hiena, a magnetic investigator who follows unorthodox methods and who fascinates and intimidates Lucie in equal measure.

Both will travel from Paris to Barcelona in an epic investigation following the trail of everyone who has crossed paths with Valentine: hardcore gangs, squatters, bourgeois students or nuns with ulterior motives; a labyrinth of characters whose lives are dangerously intertwined with Valentine's, and that will lead to a tremendous finale.

Between social satire, contemporary thriller and lesbian romance, Despentes explores throughout this novel the consequences of social inequality in Europe, as well as the destructive hedonism of a lost youth. Baby Apocalypse is a contemporary portrait that pulses from the first page thanks to Despentes' masterful and corrosive narrative style.

apocalypse baby
5/5 - (33 votes)

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