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 This is a frightening, if often comic, peek into the abyss of the aberrant. The effect on the reader is claustrophobic as little by little he or she enters more and more inescapably Suzanne’s nightmare world. The reader searches for other possibilities, some escape for Suzanne from her self-imposed constraints and torments. There are none, and each event takes her further from what she thinks she is and closer to what she actually is.
Reviewed by Bob Williams
Everyday Life
by Lydie Salvayre
Dalkey Archive Press
2006, ISBN 1-56478-349-9, $12.50, 117 pages
This is an English translation of a book published in French in 1999. Lydie Salvayre, daughter of Spanish refugees, is a psychiatrist. Her characters totter on the edge and are drawn from her professional experience. Among her other books are: The Company of Ghosts and The Lecture (the latter reviewed on the Compulsive Reader).
The protagonist and narrator is Suzanne. She calls herself a secretary, but she may only be a typist from the way that she describes her work. Her father is a dominant figure in her life and thinking. He drilled into her a stoic approach to life and as a result her severity and her contempt for others (except for her superiors to whom, she admits, she grovels) has eaten away most of her potential for the better human qualities. She is old, ceaselessly bitter, and entirely transfixed with hatred for the new ‘secretary’ introduced into her workspace. Obviously, Monsieur Meyer, her employer (the founder of the ad agency for which she works), may be thinking of the new employee as a replacement for Suzanne. With her exalted notions of her own worth and her dignity she is no match for this new and vulgar woman. Suzanne develops a severe chest pain, a result apparently of the rage that she suppresses. She visits her doctor more than once and quickly exhausts his patience.
Her daughter will not indulge her in her tirades. Suzanne’s daughter is tired of her monomaniacal indulgences and preoccupied with the misery of her own life, which mostly has to do with her marriage to a man of spectacular nastiness. He is a doctor whose specialties include extracting donations from the bereaved, bullying and belittling his wife, and making embarrassing scenes in public. Suzanne dislikes him. This seems reasonable but they are much alike – the difference between them is that between him and his world there is no restraint, no burden of a conscience or moral scruples.
Suzanne is unable to put the new secretary in her place, and begins to feign acceptance of her, a course so bizarre to her that she again needs to consult with her doctor. Worse is to come. She imagines – because the heroine of an agency-sponsored movie is so exactly her opposite – that the conspiracy against her involves not only the new secretary but also the rest of the agency including Monsieur Meyer. Her smoking, always a problem, escalates and furnishes fresh cause of friction with the new secretary.
In a frenzy to prove her worth to the agency, she climbs up to execute some unspecified task. She falls and breaks her ankle. Absence from the agency while she recovers, bleak and frightening experiences in the clinic where she undergoes therapy, complete her inner collapse. When she returns to work, it is to face compulsory retirement. Her life, already in disorder, erupts into a violent encounter with her foe, the other secretary. Although she achieves a kind of reconciliation with her daughter, now pregnant with her first child, she ends in the company of a fellow tenant and her cleaning lady, both of whom she despises.
This is a frightening, if often comic, peek into the abyss of the aberrant. The effect on the reader is claustrophobic as little by little he or she enters more and more inescapably Suzanne’s nightmare world. The reader searches for other possibilities, some escape for Suzanne from her self-imposed constraints and torments. There are none, and each event takes her further from what she thinks she is and closer to what she actually is. This is a frightening journey, and not one that will appeal to every reader, but the skill of the author is undeniable and her book is impossible to forget.
About the Reviewer: Bob Williams is retired and lives in a small town with his wife, dogs and a cat. He has been collecting books all his life, and has done freelance writing, mostly on classical music. His principal interests are James Joyce, Jane Austen and Homer. His writings, two books and a number of short articles on Joyce, can be accessed at: http://www.grand-teton.com/service/Persons_Places
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