In France, philosophers are not afraid to take up the pen to rub shoulders with fiction. Camille Froidevaux-Metterie has just joined this select club. Philosopher and professor of political science, author of several essays (including her most recent, Un corps à soi), she is publishing a first novel that tackles themes that she has already tackled on a more theoretical level: the female body, the status of women, power relations…
The starting point of Full and Sweet: the birth of a baby girl, Eve the well-named, conceived through assisted reproduction. His mother, Stephanie, wanted a child, but not the married life that comes with it.
As in Sleeping Beauty, fairies bend over the baby’s cradle. In turn, the author makes the female figures who surround Stéphanie speak. Through their words, all facets of women’s lives, at all ages, are addressed: motherhood, romantic relationships, sexism, violence, self-acceptance… A female choir in which even the baby’s voice expresses himself and shares his observations (sometimes funny) on this new world which welcomes him.
In the background: the idea of transmission. Between mothers and daughters, of course, but also through other links, choose those, and which are equally important in the lives of women.
In terms of style, very classic, we feel that the essayist is not very far. Of course, it’s a first novel. Camille Froidevaux-Metterie intellectualizes a lot and we sometimes feel the concepts behind her characters. But this first novel is successful enough to hope that the philosopher will write others.
