In France, philosophers are not afraid to take up the pen to rub shoulders with fiction. Camille Froidevaux-Metterie has just joined this select club. Philosopher and professor of political science, author of several essays (including her most recent, A body of one’s own), she is publishing a first novel that addresses themes that she has already approached on a more theoretical level: the female body, the condition of women, power relations…
The starting point of Full and sweet : the birth of a little girl, Eve the well-named, conceived thanks to assisted procreation. His mother, Stephanie, wanted a child, but not the married life that comes with it.
As in the sleeping Beauty, fairies lean over the baby’s cradle. In turn, the author makes the female figures who surround Stéphanie speak. Through their words, all facets of women’s lives, at all ages, are addressed: motherhood, love relationships, sexism, violence, self-acceptance… A female choir in which even the baby’s voice expresses himself and shares his observations (sometimes funny) on this new world which welcomes him.
In the background: the idea of transmission. Between mothers and daughters, of course, but also through other links, choose those, which are just as important in the lives of women.
In terms of style, very classic, we feel that the essayist is not very far. Of course, it’s a first novel. Camille Froidevaux-Metterie intellectualizes a lot and we sometimes feel the concepts behind her characters. But this first novel is successful enough to hope that the philosopher will write others.
Full and sweet
Camille Froidevaux-Metterie
Sabine Wespieser Editor
224 pages