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Marie Darrieussecq: Fabriquer une femme (How to Make a Woman)
I shall start with a quick quibble. The French title does not say How To Make A Woman but merely tToMake A Woman or Making A Woman. A slight difference I feel.
There are actually, two women involved in this book. They have been friends since they were girls and will remain so though they are often separated in later life. Both are French Basque living in the small town ofClèves. hey have appeared in previous novels by Darrieussecq.
Darrieussecq tells the story in two parts, with each part devoted to one of the women though of course the other woman will appear in her friend’s story. There is a relatively small addendum called Together.
We start with Rose, the more conventional and less flamboyant one. Nevertheless, it isSolange who, as will happen elsewhere in the book, gets the attention. She is fifteen and she is pregnant. It is too late to have an abortion. She does not reveal all who father is to Rose or anyone else. We will of course find out more in her story.S olange’s parents are divorced and her mother works full-time. Accordingly, it is Rose’s mother.who takes charge, knitting, food preparation and so on. Solange’s mother lwill look lk after the child with.Solange barely involved.
Rose has a boyfriend call Christian. Though he is a poet he is very low-key and teased about it by his classmates. Like many people of their age, they fumble with sex and when she finally decides to let him have intercourse, having already gone on the pill and using a condom, he is unable to perform. Even though their relationship is up and down she does stick to him though she does occasionally stray.
We follow Rose’s story. Her parents divorce but seem to be closer when divorced than when they were married. She decides to study psychology and goes off to Bordeaux to study though still comes home at weekends. She continues to see Christian who is having more difficulty in his career and looks like ending up as an estate agent. Meanwhile, Solange who has gone into acting seems to be doing well and her picture appears in magazines and on websites.
Rose does struggle somewhat with psychology, not least dealing with people suffering, such as young women – self harming.
She gets a job in Paris but is not entirely happy. She is continually sexually assaulted on the Metro and also has her bag stolen. She she does a self-defence course. Christian will join her in Paris struggling with his estate agent career and they will get married though even the wedding ceremony does not go well. However, they do settle down together and we now move to Solange’s story.
Of course we get a lot more details about the pregnancy, learning that there is more than one candidate for the father of the child. During her pregnancy, she will say to herself, I can’t change anything in the past, my dear Solange, but I’m here to tell you that the future is waiting for you. She is far more ambitious than her friend. and imagines herself as a Hollywood film star.
Where it differs from what we have learned in Rose’s account concerns the labour, delivery and post birth. She has a 24 hour labour and does not get either an epidural or caesarian. We get a lot of details about the pain and after the birth the pain remains though in a different way. When she tries to have sex even sometime later, it is still painful. However, it changes her life in an unexpected way. At school she makes it clear that she cannot do gymnastics and she is sent to the drama class. She gets a small role inAntigone but makes such a success of it her future career is determined and she will go off to Bordeaux to study drama.
It is there that she meets Brice from Guadalupe and they start in affair. Interestingly they e start going to a gay club and while he is welcome and included she is welcome but obviously not included in the activities. It is the 1980s and not surprisingly he gets.AIDS and she is worried that she will be HIV-positive.
We get glimpses of her in Rose’s story. She seems to have become a successful actress what does However, we now learn dthatit has not been so straightforward? She has had a lot of struggles. She moved to Paris he manages to hang out with the great and good such as David Bowie and she even sleeps with.Prince. She will, she struggles to get decent roles. It’s weird being showered with champagne but having to steal food from Prisunic .
She and her guitarist his boyfriend move to London does that where it seems to be happening but it does not happen for her so then she is off to Los Angeles where it is happening. We learn a lot of the trials and tribulations of a young actress, including, of course that certain producers expect certain favours to consider her for a part.
The final part has Rose and her family as well as her parents and son visiting her in Los Angeles and attending a premiere of a film in which she is to appear. It does not go well. We have seen this event before in Il faut beaucoup aimer les hommes (Men)
Inevitably, the trials and tribulations of Solange are more interesting than those of Rose because she is the most flamboyant character and the one that pushes the boundaries more. The two are apparently friends but we see relatively little contact between them and the story may be Seen more as a comparison between them.
As this is a Darrieussecq novel we see more about the suffering of the women, particularly at the hands of men with both women, but particularlySolange being victims of predatory men.
As always with Darrieussecq this is an excellent novel following lives of two women who take different paths and often stumble on the way, partially out of their own fault but partially because of others.
Publishing history
First published in French in in 2025 by P.O.L.
First English publication in 2026 by Fitzcarraldo
Translated by Penny Hueston