SELF-PORTRAIT IN GREEN

This book may be a novel or fable; it may be memoir, autofiction, or photo essay. One certainty? This small story is too big for one genre box.

A 10th-anniversary edition of NDiaye’s mercurial chronicle—of encounters between an unnamed narrator and a mysterious parade of “women in green”—includes dreamlike photos, some by French photographer Julie Ganzin which first appeared in the original French release. Musing that green cannot be the “sole color of cruelty” but that cruelty is often given to “draping itself” in green, NDiaye illustrates meetings and relationships with the (often spectral) women in her narrator’s life who sport green shorts, dresses, and coats. Some even have green eyes (or eventually do, thanks to contact lenses!). Ranging from a stern school administrator from the past to another mother at school drop-off to the ghost of a disappointed-in-life but happy-in-death wife, the women encountered by NDiaye’s bemused narrator seem positioned to illuminate various truths about her own life to her, however obliquely. NDiaye slyly alludes to the artifice of wardrobing all the women in green when the narrator’s mother, “a green woman,” appears wearing a pink suit. (She also ponders whether life without these muses would be bearable and whether she would lose individuality should they disappear.) Ganzin’s photography, along with other shots attributed only to “anonymous,” amplify the moody and atmospheric sense of vague unreality NDiaye so successfully creates. The presence of what may—or may not—be a menacing black creature running around the riverside setting does nothing to dispel this fantasy. Stump, a frequent translator of NDiaye’s work, preserves the enigma as well.

NDiaye’s glittering narrative prism reflects more than green—it reflects a life.