Anne Serre
The author of fourteen books, Anne Serre was born in 1960. Her first novel, Les Gouvernantes, was published in 1992 and praised by La Croix for its “remarkable economy of style.”
The Beginners
Fiction by Anne Serre
Translated by Mark Hutchinson
Anna has been living happily for twenty years with loving, sturdy, outgoing Guillaume when she suddenly (truly at first sight) falls in love with Thomas. Intelligent and handsome, but apparently scarred by a terrible early emotional wound, he reminds Anna of Jude the Obscure. Adrift and lovelorn, she tries unsuccessfully to fend off her attraction, torn between the two men. “How strange it is to leave someone you love for someone you love.…
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The Fool and Other Moral Tales
Fiction by Anne Serre
Translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson
From the brilliant, sui generis Anne Serre—author of the celebrated Governesses—come three delicious, thoroughly out-of-the-way tales.
Fairy-tale atmospheres and complex narratives are a hallmark of the fiction of Anne Serre, represented here by three radically heterodox novellas. The Fool may have stepped out of a tarot pack: “I came across this little figure rather late in life. Not being familiar with playing cards, still less with the tarot, I was a bit uncomfortable when I first set eyes on him.…
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The Governesses
Fiction by Anne Serre
Translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson
In a large country house shut off from the world by a gated garden, three young governesses responsible for the education of a group of little boys are preparing a party. The governesses, however, seem to spend more time running around in a state of frenzied desire than attending to the children’s education. One of their main activities is lying in wait for any passing stranger, and then throwing themselves on him like drunken Maenads.…
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Her books that have been translated into English—The Governesses, The Fool and Other Moral Tales and The Beginners—have a glamour in the older sense of the word, that of witchcraft. These are books that, in their concern with the properties of fiction—plots, narrator, genre, characters—use these very elements to beguile.—The Point, Rhian Sasseen
Serre’s collection speaks bravely, poignantly and perversely to the hazards of alienation — from one’s self, from those around you — while also illuminating the blessings and curses, the gifts and sacrifices, of being called to dwell in the gauzy world of stories.—John Biscello, Riot Material
With its psychological reality infused with fabulism, Serre’s fiction seems to have invented its own genre of literature. The Fool & Other Moral Tales is an impeccable collection.—Ankita Chakraborty, The New York Times
From the author of the brilliant novel The Governesses, comes another beguiling piece of art, this time a collection of three novellas exploring desire and morality.—Three Percent
Three surreal, fairy-tale infused tales, translated from the French, all of them playful, odd, and definitely exploratory.—Emily Temple, LitHub “Astrology Book Club
Drawing on fairy tales and psychoanalysis, pornography and poststructuralism, Serre constructs stunning and searing stories. Dreamy and deeply sexual.—Publishers Weekly
A feminist fantasy, where women satisfy their sexual needs free from society’s opprobrium.—The Arts Fuse
Genuinely original—and, often, very quietly so. Seriously weird and seriously excellent…call it the anglerfish of literature.—Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
Serre’s language is tight and fabulist, a slim and sensuous fairy tale that reads like something born from an orgy between Charles Perrault, Shirley Jackson, and Angela Carter.—Full Stop
