*** WARNING: THIS BOOK CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND EXPLICIT SEXUAL CONTENT ***

In extremely graphic and fluid prose, whose quiet audacity and freedom is reminiscent of the writings of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, Emma Becker examines her love and sex life from every angle, with staggering frankness.

Le Mal Joli (This Pretty Evil), the title of Becker’s sixth book, is an expression used by obstetricians and midwives to describe the pain of childbirth, a suffering “where you see yourself dying.” Le Joli Mal, “as soon as it is gone, one forgets it.” These words are equally apt for the amnesia of lovers who, once reunited, forget all about the torment of waiting, as well as the agonies of the writer who sweats blood and water while writing her book, agonies that are erased by the joy of publication.

Emma, our narrator, is a writer who lives in the French provinces with her husband and two young children. At a literary event in Paris, she meets Antonin de Quincy D’Avricourt, an aristocrat, writer, and father. They seduce each other and begin a passionate affair.

Emma Becker tells of the torments of soul and body, of expectation, of the rise of pleasure, of feelings of ecstasy and abandonment, of the lack of the other and of guilt (about being a bad mother and an unfaithful wife). It’s precisely because she says it all, because she doesn’t seek to aestheticize her acts, but instead to anchor them in (banal) everyday life, and in the fallibility of the body, that her scenes endear them to us. Becker recounts the reality of passion, and its ravages, the feeling of being dazed, of being occupied, invaded, by someone else.

In Le Mal Joli, as in Becker’s previous books, the borders between experimenting and writing are porous. Chapter after chapter, the narrative reveals, with obsessive meticulousness, how “the intimate world opposes the real world like excess to measure, madness to reason, intoxication to lucidity”, in the words of Georges Bataille. To the point that it becomes obvious that writing is indeed the real topic of Le Mal Joli.

Le Mal Joli by Emma Becker, Albin Michel.

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Miriam Bridenne

After almost two decades of working in publishing, and a few round trips between Paris and New York, Miriam has decided to settle down at Albertine to do what she enjoys most: recommending books she loves. Somehow this also includes taking bizarre pictures for Albertine's social media outlets.

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