Jabès, Sophie 1958–

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Jabès, Sophie 1958–

PERSONAL:

Born 1958, in Milan, Italy. Education: Master of history, Paris, France; master of political science, Paris, France; M.S. (broadcasting and film), Boston, MA. Hobbies and other interests: Tennis.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Paris, France. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Author. Has worked in television programming and production, including for the National Broadcasting Corporation in Boston, MA, and for a subsidiary of Grey Advertising in New York, NY; former event organizer for the French Alliance and the Chinese Women Association.

WRITINGS:

Alice, la saucisse (novel), Éditions Verticales (Paris, France), 2003, published in English as Alice, the Sausage, translated by Catherine Petit and Paul Buck, Dedalus (Cambridgeshire, UK), 2007.

Caroline assassine (novel), Jean Claude Lattès (Paris, France), 2004.

Clitomotrice (novel), Jean Claude Lattès (Paris, France), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Although born in Milan, Italy, Sophie Jabès has lived in several cities throughout Europe, including Geneva, Switzerland; Naples and Rome, Italy; and Paris, France, where she has settled down to write novels in French. Her first book, Alice, la saucisse, was also the first to be translated into English. It was published in 2007 in a translation by Catherine Petit and Paul Buck titled Alice, the Sausage. It is an unusual book about a woman who sabotages her own body because of a remark her father makes to her. At the beginning of this short novel, Alice is a thin and beautiful girl who is often complimented on her appearance by passersby. She considers herself to be pretty, too, until one day her father tells her in very frank terms that there are only two kinds of women on the planet: women who are beautiful and women who are nice to people. He tells her that she is not pretty and therefore must be the latter type of woman.

Shocked by this, Alice starts being "nice" to men in the only way she can figure out to fill the hole in her soul created by her father: she becomes a prostitute. She also tries to fill this emptiness with food, and she eats more and more. Because she gains weight, she specializes as a prostitute for men who like their women rubenesque, especially men who have a fetish of watching women eat while they have sex. Eventually, Alice becomes morbidly obese to the point where even these men do not want her, and her final act of prostitution is to offer herself to the mentally ill.

A Kirkus Reviews writer criticized the author for failing to "offer any new perspective" on a serious issue of the self-image of women. Furthermore, the critic felt that the book also fails as a piece of erotica: "It's useful neither as food porn nor as the more traditional type" because the author provides only "abbreviated" descriptions of Alice's indulgences in sex. Whitney Scott, however, writing in Booklist, held a contrary view. "Jabes humanizes this disorder by compellingly conveying its emotional underpinnings," Scott asserted, adding that the conclusion to the novel, in which Alice's mother arrives in time to destroy any last hopes of her daughter's happiness, is "unforgettably wrenching."