With Lionesses, the British-American novelist Lucy Ellmann signs one of the most surprising books of the new school year.
In recent years, several cobblestones have gained media attention. The goldfinch by Donna Tartt, for example. Or City on fire by Garth Risk Hallberg, Lighting by Eleanor Catton, 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster and 22/11/63 by Stephen King.
But in a few days, we’ll also start talking a lot about Lionesses, by Lucy Ellmann. Another pavement, which this time has more than 1100 pages. And that takes place entirely in the mind of a stay-at-home mother in Ohio spending most of her time looking after the children – she has four -, cooking and keeping the house. In short, an all the more ordinary woman, whose thoughts will follow one another in a single sentence. That’s it, not the slightest point anywhere. Only commas and the phrase “the fact that”, which comes up everywhere and all the time like a mantra: “… the fact that words pop up in my head like that all the time, and damn, the fact that I I have to make the dough for the cinnamon rolls, the fact that … ”Yes, a long tirade of several tens of thousands of lines which is likely to destabilize more than one reader!
“It took years to texturize, nuance and structure the flow of consciousness of this woman,” says Lucy Ellmann, who responded by email. I never stopped enriching it. I also updated it (I started this novel before Trump’s presidency started, and that too had to be incorporated). I added 30,000 more words to the final version. My editors forgave me. Among friends, what are a few thousand words? “