“Grey goes with everything.”
Sa Femme or The Other Woman is a novella from award-winning French writer Emmanuele Bernheim. It’s the story of Claire, a 30-year-old doctor. Claire has a very orderly–almost sterile–existence. One half of her flat is devoted to her medical practice (waiting room, surgery, and examination room), and she lives in the other half. Claire takes appointments until 8 at night, and her favourite season is the winter as it brings her patients with bronchitis and pneumonia. Claire’s former beau, Michel, still has keys to her flat, and he visits several times a week. Their relationship is odd–too tense and loaded to be a friendship, but too cold to be romantic.
One day, Claire meets Thomas Kovacs–a building site supervisor. Thomas tells Claire that he is married and has two children. They begin an affair, and Thomas makes it perfectly clear that he will never leave his wife.
The most interesting aspect of this book is Bernheim’s description of how the affair shapes Claire’s life. Even though Thomas carefully limits his visits to Claire to one hour and 15 minutes a night, nonetheless, Claire begins to plan her entire day around his visit. She shrinks her office time, collects souvenirs of their trysts, becomes distracted, and is constantly imagining Thomas with his wife and children. She even devises ways to keep him there a little longer, and she considers it a major triumph if he stays for an hour and a half.
The novella remains largely unsatisfying, and I can’t explain too much without giving away the plot. But the plot switches, and there is no logic or explanation for the characters. I should add here that I was attracted to this novel because Bernheim wrote the novel the film Swimming Pool was based on. Bernheim also shares writing credits on the film Under the Sand (both films are from director Francois Ozon). I loved the surreal and vague endings of both of these films, and I wanted to try a novel by Bernheim. Unfortunately, in Sa Femme the vagueness of the conclusion did not work. Instead, when I finished the book, I felt as though someone had stolen the ending.
