The Governesses [Paperback]

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 childrens education. One of their main activities is lying in wait for any passing stranger, and then throwing themselves on him like drunken Maenads. The rest of the time they drift about in a kind of sated, melancholy calm, spied upon by an old man in the house opposite, who watches their goings-on through a telescope. As they hang paper lanterns and prepare for the ball in their own honor, and in honor of the little boys rolling hoops on the lawn, much is mysterious: one reviewer wrote of the books deceptively simple words and phrasing, the transparency of which works like a mirror reflecting back on the reader.Told in surrealist bursts, this novella combines the dreaminess of Barbara Comyns, Aimee Bender, and Kathryn Davis with the fairy-tale eroticism of Angela Carter. Each sentence evokes a dream logic both languid and circuitous as the governesses move through a fever of domesticity and sexual abandon. A sensualist, surrealist romp.A cruel and exhilarating book. Anne Serres style is perfectly controlled. Colorful, by turns elegant and violent, it provokes that enchantment borne out of an unbridled imagination.A hypnotic tale of three governesses and the sensuous education they provide. In?s, Laura, and El?onore are not exactly Jane Eyre types. Prone to Dionysian frenzies, should any passerby fall into the trap of their vast, lunar privacy, they pounce upon, seduce, and devour him (in a ladylike manner) to sate their ungovernable desires. This could be the setup for a neo-pagan farce, but as Serre delves into the three womens existence, the novel taps into deeper, quieter waters: the Keatsian twinning of joy and melancholy. Serres wistful ode to pleasure is as elC˜