Lauren Elkin is known for her astute feminist examinations of art and literature. In her previous books, the non-fiction works Art Monsters and Flâneuse , the American author explored the lives of radical intellectual women with wit and intrigue. She brings a similar instinct to her English translations of renowned French authors, including Simone de Beauvoir and Constance Debré.
Her debut novel, then, is the logical fictional culmination of this work. Scaffolding is an ambitious, multi-generational book that reckons with legacy, faith and feminist resistance. It examines the forces of the political on the personal, and explores how these outside pressures both quell and liberate the human condition.
In 2019 we meet our narrator, Anna, a psychoanalyst who lives in an apartment in the Parisian neighbourhood of Belleville with her husband, David. She has been signed off work after experiencing a miscarriage and is now seeing a therapist herself. David is a lawyer who has recently taken a job in London, so Anna spends a lot of time in the apartment alone.
When she meets Clémentine, a new neighbour, they begin a friendship that is intense from the off. They discuss books, writers and psychological theory; Anna describes the kind of psychoanalysis she subscribes to, based on the work of Jacques Lacan. She explains: “It’s less about coming up with a narrative that explains and cures your symptoms and more about what might be suggested during the therapeutic process.
.. You.
