Marie Darrieussecq in 2011
Marie Darrieussecq, 2011 (Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0)

Marie Darrieussecq was born on 3 January 1969. Her mother taught French literature at junior level and her father was a technician. She grew up in the small village of Bassussarry near Bayonne in the French Basque country. As a child she was an avid reader, drawing on her family’s library, which she claims included texts as diverse as the works of Tolstoy and the latest bestseller. At the end of her thesis, she referred back to her early years, in terms that suggest that the key themes of her texts were foreshadowed in her childhood imagination, ‘[D]ans mon enfance, il y avait des fantômes autour de moi, les miens, silencieux et présents’.

Darrieussecq has claimed that she knew from the age of six that she wanted to be a writer. She wrote avidly and specialized in the study of literature from high school onwards. In 1986 she graduated from secondary school with a Baccalaureate in Literature. In 1988 she achieved a measure of early success, winning the Prix des Jeunes Ecrivains, awarded by Le Monde. Around this time, she also became drawn to the work of Hervé Guibert, whose ‘fractured biographies’ of HIV-infected characters spoke to a generation whose own lives were complicated by the threat of AIDS (quoted in Le Nouvel Observateur, 1737, 2 February 1998). She was later to complete her Master’s degree on this author.

In 1988 Darrieussecq began her higher education in Bordeaux, studying among other cultural and critical theorists the theories of Roland Barthes. The period 1990-1994 was spent reading French literature at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, which she described as one of dense writing and intense reading. She received her Agrégation de letters in 1992.

For her doctoral thesis Darrieussecq extended her critical analysis of Giubert’s work with complementary studies of Perec, Leiris and Doubrovsky. The main focus of the thesis was the interplay of autobiography and irony in these authors’ works.

After leaving the Ecole Normale in 1994, Darrieussecq taught French literature at the University of Lille, specializing in Stendhal and Proust. In an interview with Becky Miller and Martha Holmes, she stated that Stendhal’s Chartreuse de Parme comes closest to being her ideal novel, as she prefers ‘les livres auxquels il manque une pièce, qui font entendre un bruit... qui restent ouverts, inachevables, en quelque sorte indéfiniment à écrire’.

In 1996 Darrieussecq underwent a course of psychoanalysis. At this point she was writing both academic criticism and fiction. Her main published academic paper ‘L'autofiction, un genre pas sérieux', which dealt with narratology, appeared in the September edition of the journal Poétique. She also wrote Truismes while completing her doctorate. However, Darrieussecq has warned against interpreting either text as confirmation that her own writing is predominantly autobiographical. In Martha Holmes’ biography, she explains the distinction between life and art: ‘l'imaginaire est mon domaine, même s'il est forcément nourri (comme chez tous les écrivains) de mon vécu, comme s'en nourrissent les rêves: de loin et métaphoriquement’.

Truismes – a postmodern tale of shape-shifting that sees a woman slowly transformed into a pig, caused a literary sensation when it was published by POL in 1996. The novel, which Darrieussecq describes as speaking ‘du corps, vécu de l'intérieur’, introduced themes that have become central to the author’s work (see Jérôme Garcin’s article in Le Nouvel Observateur, 1684, 19-25 February 1998). These include a focus on the traumatic transformation of bodies and an exploration of the porosity of physical and psychological boundaries. It also crossed boundaries in terms of audience, becoming both the object of academic critical analysis and a popular cult read. This success reflects Darrieussecq’s stated aim to produce novels that occupy ‘un espace entre Mary Higgins Clark et Claude Simon’. In retrospect, Darrieussecq has described this period as a turbulent one. In her late twenties, her first novel achieved sales of 300,000, the title was translated into 34 languages, and the film rights were sold to Jean-Luc Godard. In her own words she felt ‘a la fois epuissée et sur un nuage’.

Truismes was not Darrieussecq’s first complete novel, however. She claims to have written six previous works, not ‘mature’ enough to publish, but which helped her to develop her distinctive style. The as yet unpublished Sorgina (Witch), sent to publishers when Darrieussecq was just twenty, had already drawn her work to the attention of noted Minuit-editor Jérôme Lindon, and elicited feedback that prompted her to keep writing. However, it was Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens rather than Lindon, who was the first to accept Truismes for publication, starting an editorial relationship with POL, which has published all Darrieussecq’s main texts to date.

In 1997 Darrieussecq successfully defended her thesis – Moments critiques dans l'autobiographie contemporaine: l'ironie tragique et l'autofiction chez Doubrovsky, Guibert, Leiris et Perec – before a panel of four leading French academics. Following the success of her first novel, however, she gave up lecturing, a profession that she found hard to combine with dedicated novel writing.

Compiled by Sandra Daroczi (Bath)

Bibliography

'La notion du leurre chez Hervé Guibert: décryptage d'un roman-leurre, L'incognito' (Nottingham French Studies, 34, 1, Spring 1995, pp. 82-8)

'L'autofiction, un genre pas sérieux' (Poetique, 107, September 1996, pp. 369-80)

Truismes (Paris: POL,1996)

'Quand je me sens très fatiguée le soir' (L'Infini, 58, Summer 1997, pp. 26-8)

Naissance des fantômes (Paris: POL, 1999)

'Marie Redonnet et l'écriture de la mémoire', in Ecritures contemporains 1: mémoires du récit ed. by Dominique Viart (Paris/Caen: Lettres Modernes Minard, 1988, pp.174-94)

'Isabel' (L'Infini, 62, Summer 1998, pp. 16-19)

Le Mal de mer (Paris: POL, 1999)

Précisions sur les vagues (Paris: POL, 1999)

Claire dans le forêt (previously unpublished short story sold with Elle, 2848 [31 July 2000])

'Lamarche-Vidal immanquablement' (L'Infini, 70, Summer 2000), pp. 57-64)

Bref séjour chez les vivants (Paris: POL, 2001)

Le Bébe (Paris: POL, 2002)

White (Paris: POL, 2003)

Le Pays (Paris: POL, 2005)

Zoo (Paris: POL, 2006)

Tom est mort (Paris: POL, 2007)

Précisions sur les vagues (Paris: P.O.L., 2008; previously issued free with Le Mal de mer [1999])

Le Musée de la mer (Paris: POL, 2009)

Rapport de police: accusations de plagiat et autres modes de surveillance (Paris: POL, 2010)

Clèves (Paris: POL, 2011)

La mer console de touts les laideurs, photographies Gabrielle Duplantier (Pau: Éditions Cairn, 2012)

Il faut beaucoup aimer les hommes (Paris: POL, 2013)

Être ici est une splendeur: Vie de Paula M. Becker (Paris: POL, 2016)

Translations into Foreign Languages

English

Pig Tales [Translation of Truismes by Linda Coverdale] (London: Faber & Faber, 1997)

My Phantom Husband [Translation of Naissance des fantômes by Helen Stevenson] (London: Faber & Faber, 1999)

Breathing Underwater [Translation of Le Mal de mer by Linda Coverdale] (London: Faber & Faber, 2001)

Undercurrents: A Novel [Translation of Le Mal de mer by Linda Coverdale] (New York: The New Press, 2001)

On Waves [Translation of Precisions sur les vagues by Peter Schulman, with original text] (Halifax, Nova Scotia: VVV Editions, 2015)

Brief Stay with the Living [Translation of Bref séjour chez les vivants by Ian Monk] (London: Faber & Faber, 2004)

White [Translation of White by Ian Monk] (London: Faber & Faber, 2006)

Tom is Dead [Translation of Tom est mort by Lia Hills] (Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 2009)

All the Way [Translation of Clèves by Penny Hueston] (Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 2013)

Men [Translation of Il faut beaucoup aimer les hommes by Penny Hueston] (Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 2016)

Criticism

Asibong, Andrew: ‘Mulier Sacra: Marie Chauvet, Marie Darrieussecq, and the Sexual Metamorphoses of “Bare Life”’ (French Cultural Studies 14.2, June 2003)

Barnet, Marie-Claire: ‘Sur la Terre (de glace et de guerre) comme au theatre: Le Musée de la mer de Marie Darrieussecq et Arthur Nauzyciel’ in Marie Darrieussecq ed. by Helena Chadderton and Gill Rye (Dalhousie French Studies [special issue] 98, Spring 2012)

—: ‘Off Limits: Trans-Border Land and Language in Marie Darrieussecq’ in Experiment and Experience: Women's Writing in France 2000-2010, ed. by Gill Rye and Amaleena Damle (Oxford: Peter Lang [Studies in Contemporary Women’s Writing 1], 2013, pp. 191-209)

Baron, Anne-Marie: 'Truismes de Marie Darrieussecq: une expérience pédagogique en classe de seconde' (L'Ecole des Lettres 11, 8 [1997-8], pp. 3-9)

Beaulé, Sophie: ‘Le corps en devenir et la machine de guerre: Bérard, Chen, Darrieussecq et Dufour’ (Recherches Feminists [special issue: Femmes extrêmes] 27.1, 2014)

Caine, Philippa: 'Redefining the Boundaries of Corpo-reality for “la femme” in Marie Darrieussecq's Naissances des fantomes’ in Redefining the Real: The Fantastic in Contemporary French and Francophone Women's Writing ed. by Margaret-Anne Hutton (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009, pp. 45-64)

Carlini Versini, Dominique: ‘Excès et métamorphoses de la peau dans Truismes de Marie Darrieussecq’ (Women in French Studies, 27, 2019, pp. 170–86)

—: ‘Poétique de la science chez Marie Darrieussecq’ (Dalhousie French Studies, 115, Winter 2020, pp. 3–10)

Carlini Versini, Dominique and Fréville, Carine: Précisions sur les sciences dans l’œuvre de Marie Darrieussecq (Dalhousie French Studies, 115, Winter 2020)

 —: ‘Écrire «par tous les moyens»: Marie Darrieussecq en conversation avec Dominique Carlini Versini et Carine Fréville.’ (Dalhousie French Studies, 115, Winter 2020, pp. 125–32)

Chadderton, Helena: ‘Identity Negotiation in Marie Darrieussecq’s Le Bébé and Le Pays’ in Une et divisible? Plural Identities in Modern France ed. by Barbara Lebrun and Jill Lovecy (Modern French Identities, 90, 2010)

—: ‘Writing Motherhood: Marie Darrieussecq’s Le Bébé’ in Aimer et mourir: Love, Death, and Women’s Lives in Texts of French Expression ed. by Eilene Hoft-March and Judith Holland Sarnecki (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009, pp. 152-68)

—: ‘Transposing the Thought Process in Marie Darrieussecq’s Bref séjour chez les vivants’ in Language and Its Contexts: Transposition and Transformation of Meaning?/Le Langage et ses contextes: transposition et transformation du sens? ed. by Pierre-Alexi Mevel and Helen Tattam (Berne: Peter Lang, 2011)

—: Marie Darrieussecq's Textual Worlds: Self, Society, Language (Modern French Identities, 101, 2012)

—: ‘Experience and Experiment in the Work of Marie Darrieussecq’ in Women's Writing in Twenty-First-Century France: Life as Literature ed. by Amaleena Damlé and Gill Rye (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013, pp. 183-95)

Chadderton, Helena and Rye, Gill [eds]: Marie Darrieussecq (Dalhousie French Studies [special issue] 98, Spring 2012)

—: ‘Marie Darrieussecq: Controversy, Ambivalence, Innovation’ in Marie Darrieussecq ed. by Helena Chadderton and Gill Rye (Dalhousie French Studies [special issue] 98, Spring 2012)

Cottille-Foley, Nora: ‘Un texte en cache-t-il un autre? Le palimpseste chez Marie Darrieussecq’ (French Literature Series 37.1, 2010, pp. 129-140)

Damlé, Amaleena: ‘Truismes: The Simulation of a Pig’ in Marie Darrieussecq ed. by Helena Chadderton and Gill Rye (Dalhousie French Studies [special issue] 98, Spring 2012)

—: The Becoming of the Body: Contemporary Women's Writing in French (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014)

Dangy, Isabelle: ‘Matière physique et matière mentale dans White de Marie Darrieussecq’ (Dalhousie French Studies, 115, Winter 2020, pp. 115–23)

Dalton, Benjamin: ‘Forms of Freedoms: Marie Darrieussecq, Catherine Malabou, and the Plasticity of Science’ (Dalhousie French Studies,115, Winter 2020, pp. 55–73)

Desblache, Lucile: ‘Women and Apes in Twenty-First-Century French Writing: New Narratives of Experience’ in Experiment and Experience: Women's Writing in France 2000-2010, ed. by Gill Rye and Amaleena Damle (Oxford: Peter Lang [Studies in Contemporary Women’s Writing 1], 2013, pp. 159-174)

Dolidon, Annabelle: ‘Être ou “à-paraître”: traces de l’hésitation dans Le Pays et White de Marie Darrieussecq’  (Australian Journal of French Studies, 49.1, 2012, pp. 3-17)

Duffy, Jean: Thresholds of Meaning: Passage, Ritual and Liminality in Contemporary French Narrative (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011)

—: ‘Liminality and Fantasy in Marie Darrieussecq, Marie NDiaye and Marie Redonnet’ (MLN 124.4, September 2009, pp. 901-928)

—: ‘In the Wake of Trauma: Visualising the Unspeakable/Unthinkable in Marie Darrieussecq and Hélène Lenoir’ (Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 27.4, 2011, pp. 416-428)

Favre, Isabelle: 'Marie Darrieussecq ou lard de la calorie vide' (Women in French Studies, 8, 2000, pp. 164-176)

Fréville, Carine: ‘Révolte contre l’effacement et sur-vie à l’ère de l’hypertechnologie dans Notre vie dans les forêts de Marie Darrieussecq’ (Dalhousie French Studies, 115, Winter 2020, pp. 89–105)

Galichon, Isabelle: ‘Le bébé : un personnage expérimental’ (Dalhousie French Studies,115, Winter 2020, pp. 107–14)

Garvey, Brenda: ‘Embodied Spaces and Out-of-Body Experiences in Le Pays’ in Marie Darrieussecq ed. by Helena Chadderton and Gill Rye (Dalhousie French Studies [special issue] 98, Spring 2012)

Gaudet, Jeanette: 'Dishing the Dirt: Metamorphosis in Marie Darrieussecq's Truismes' (Women in French Studies 9, 2001, pp. 181-192)

—:  'Une Conversation avec Marie Darrieussecq : Des livres sur la liberté' (Dalhousie French Studies, 59, Summer 2002, pp. 108-18)

Guichard, Jean-Paul: ‘“La mariée mise à nu par…”: Corps de femmes, regards de femmes dans la littérature au tournant du siècle’ (Journal of Twentieth-Century Contemporary French Studies 6.1, 2002, pp. 103-118)

Jones, Katie: Representing Repulsion: The Aesthetics of Disgust in Contemporary Women’s Writing in French and German (Oxford: Peter Lang [Studies in Contemporary Women’s Writing 2], 2013)

Jordan, Shirley: 'Saying the Unsayable: Identities in Crisis in the Early Novels of Marie Darrieussecq' in Women's Writing in Contemporary France: New Writers, New Literatures in the 1990s ed. by Gill Rye and Michael Worton (Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press, 2002, pp. 142-153)

— :Contemporary French Women's Writing: Women's Visions, Women's Voices, Women's Lives (Oxford/Berne: Peter Lang, 2004)

—: '“Un grand coup de pied dans le chateau de cubes”: Formal Experimentation in Marie Darrieussecq's Bref sejour chez les vivants' (The Modern Language Review, 100.1, January 2005, pp. 51-67)

—: 'Figuring out the Family: Family as Everyday Practice in Contemporary French Women's Writing' in Affaires de famille: The Family in Contemporary French Culture and Theory ed. by Marie-Claire Barnet and Edward Welch (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2007, pp.39-58)

—: Jordan, Shirley: ‘Entretien avec Marie Darrieussecq’ in Marie Darrieussecq ed. by Helena Chadderton and Gill Rye (Dalhousie French Studies [special issue] 98, Spring 2012)

Kemp, Simon: ‘Darrieussecq’s Mind’ (French Studies 62.4, October 2008, pp. 429-41)

—: French Fiction into the Twenty-First Century: The Return to the Story (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2010)

—: ‘The Ghost and the Machine: Minds and Spirits in Darrieussecq’ in Marie Darrieussecq ed. by Helena Chadderton and Gill Rye (Dalhousie French Studies [special issue] 98, Spring 2012)

—: ‘«Comment peut-on être cochon?»: darwinisme et conscience chez Darrieussecq’ (Dalhousie French Studies,115, Winter 2020, pp. 21–28)

Ledoux-Beaugrand, Evelyne and Mavrikakis, Catherine: ‘Les écrits de l’intime: l’écrivaine en justicière et criminelle’ (Women in French Studies 17, 2009, pp. 116-29 [includes discussion of Laurens-Darrieussecq plagiarism affair])

McAllister, N.: 'Woolf at the Shore' (Observer Review, 13 May 2001, p.15)

McCaffrey, Enda: ‘The Ecopoetics of Reparation: Energy, Air and Cosmos in Marie Darrieussecq’s Tom est mort’ (Dalhousie French Studies,115, Winter 2020, pp. 29–39)

Marie, Annabelle and Cornille, Jean-Louis: ‘Portrait de Marie Darrieussecq se livrant à une forme particulière d’altruisme’ (Estudios Románicos 23, 2014, pp. 129-140)

Marrone, Claire: ‘Echoes of Annie Ernaux in Marie Darrieussecq’s Le Bébé’ (Dalhousie French Studies 76, Fall 2006, pp. 93-99)

Michel, Christian: '"Le réel dort aussi": un panorama de jeune roman français' (Esprit, 225, October 1996, pp. 43-67)

Nettlebeck, Colin W.: 'Novelists and their Engagement with History: Some Contemporary French Cases' (Australian Journal of French Studies, 35(2), May-August 1998, pp. 243-57)

O’Beirne, Emer: ‘Navigating “Non-Lieux” in Contemporary Fiction: Houellebecq, Darrieussecq, Echenoz, and Augé’ (Modern Language Review 101.2, April 2006, pp. 388-401)

Phillips. John: 'Truismes by Marie Darrieussecq' in Forbidden Fictions, Pornography and Censorship in Twentieth Century Literature by John Phillips (London: Pluto Press, 1999, pp. 182-92)

Posthumus, Stephanie: ‘Posthuman Conjectures: Animal and Ecological Sciences in Marie Darrieussecq’s Dystopian Fiction’ (Dalhousie French Studies,115, Winter 2020, pp. 41–54)

Robson, Kathryn: 'Virtual Reality : The Subject of Loss in Marie Darrieussecq's Naissance de fantômes and Regine Detambel's La Chambre d'echo' (Australian Journal of French Studies)

—: 'Psychic Plagiarism: The Death of a Child in Marie Darrieussecq's Tom est mort and Camille Laurens's Philippe (French Studies, 69.1, 2015, pp. 46-59)

Roche, Daria Michelle: From Object to Subject: Language and the Body in Novels by Marie Cardinal, Christiane Rochefort, Marie-Claire Blais, and Marie Darrieussecq, (Thesis, held by University of Indiana, 2000)

Rodgers, Catherine: 'Aucune évidence: les truismes de Marie Darrieussecq' (Romance Studies, 18(1), June 2000, pp. 69-81)

—: 'Entrevoir l’absence des bords du monde dans les romans de Marie Darrieussecq' in Nouvelles écrivaines: Nouvelles voix? ed. by Nathalie Morello and Catherine Rodgers  (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002, pp.83-103)

— :'Between "white" and "blanc": The Margin of the Fantastic in Marie Darrieussecq's White' in Redefining the Real: The Fantastic in Contemporary French and Francophone Women's Writing ed. by Margaret-Anne Hutton (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009, pp.13-30)

—: ‘Marie Darrieussecq: écrivaine de l’entre-deux’ (Women in French Studies [Special issue]: Women in the Middle, 2009, pp. 105-17)

—: ‘Aux limites du moi, des mots et du monde: questions d’identité dans Le Pays de Marie Darrieussecq’ in Le Roman français de l’extrême contemporain: écritures, engagements, énonciations ed. by Barbara Havercroft, Pascal Michelucci and Pascal Riendeau (Quebec: Nota Bene, 2010, pp. 403-22)

—:‘Création ou procreation? Mise en perspective de la réponse de Marie Darrieussecq dans Le Bébé’ in Marie Darrieussecq ed. by Helena Chadderton and Gill Rye (Dalhousie French Studies [special issue] 98, Spring 2012)

Rodgers, Julie: ‘Body Politics in Truismes: “The Tyranny of Slenderness”’ in Marie Darrieussecq ed. by Helena Chadderton and Gill Rye (Dalhousie French Studies [special issue] 98, Spring 2012)

Rolla, Chiara: ‘Clèves de Marie Darrieussecq: parcours de lecture et tentative(s) de définition(s)’ (Cahiers de narratologie 23, 2012, pp. 2-14)

Rolls, Alistair and Vuaille-Barcan, Marie-Laure: ‘Une seule ou plusieurs femmes-truies? Une lecture virtualisante de Truismes de Marie Darrieussecq’ (Australian Journal of French Studies 46.1/2, 2009, pp. 31-44)

Rye, Gill: 'Women's Writing' in Women in Contemporary France ed. by Abigail Gregory and Ursula Tidd (Oxford/New York: Berg, 2000, pp.133-151)

—: 'In Uncertain Terms: Mothering without Guilt in Marie Darrieussecq's Le Mal de mer and Christine Angot's Leonore, toujours' (L'Esprit Createur: A new Generation: Sex, Gender and Creativity in Contemporary Women's Writing in French ed. by Gill Rye [Special issue], 45.1, Spring 2005)

—: 'Marie Darrieussecq's Le Pays: Threshold Worlds'  in Redefining the Real: The Fantastic in Contemporary French and Francophone Women's Writing ed. by Margaret-Anne Hutton (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009, pp. 31-44)

—: ‘Narratives of Mothering without Guilt’ in Narratives of Mothering: Women’s Writing in Contemporary France by Gill Rye (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2009, pp. 139-54)

 —: ‘No Dialogue? Mothers and Mothering in the Work of Marie Darrieussecq’ in Marie Darrieussecq ed. by Helena Chadderton and Gill Rye (Dalhousie French Studies [special issue] 98, Spring 2012)

Sadoux, Marion: 'Le corps au fantastique: métamorphoses de Marie Darrieussecq' (La Choutte, 29, 1998, pp. 15-25)

—: 'Marie Darrieussecq's Truismes: Hesitating between Fantasy and Truth' (Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies, 7, 1999, pp.197-203)

Sarrey-Strack, Colette: Fictions contemporaines au féminin: Marie Darrieussecq, Marie Ndiaye, Marie Nimier, Marie Redonnet (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002)

Samoyault, Tiphaine: 'Mer cannibale' (Les Inrockuptibles, 17 March 1999, pp.58-9)

Sauble-Otto, Lorie: 'Writing to Exist: Humanity and Survival in two fin-de-siècle Novels in French (Harpman, Darrieussecq [Truismes])’ (L'Esprit Createur: A new Generation: Sex, Gender and Creativity in Contemporary Women's Writing in French ed. by Gill Rye [Special issue], 45.1, Spring 2005)

Schaal, Michèle A: ‘Le “je” comme “jeu”: genre féminin et performance dans Truismes de Marie Darrieussecq’ in Marie Darrieussecq ed. by Helena Chadderton and Gill Rye (Dalhousie French Studies [special issue] 98, Spring 2012)

Simon, Anne: ‘Deterritorialisations de Marie Darrieussecq’ in Space, Place and Landscape in Contemporary Francophone Women’s Writing ed. by Marie-Claire Barnet and Shirley Jordan (Dalhousie French Studies, 93 [Special issue], Winter 2010, pp. 17-26)

—: ‘Marie Darrieussecq ou la plongée dans les “mondes animaux”’ in Marie Darrieussecq ed. by Helena Chadderton and Gill Rye (Dalhousie French Studies [special issue] 98, Spring 2012)

Stojanovic, Sonja: ‘Marie Darrieussecq's Ghost’ (Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, 69.4, 2015), also online [complete text]

—: ‘Becoming Indivisible in the Age of Cloning: Resistance, Individuality, and Photography in Notre vie dans les forêts’ (Dalhousie French Studies, 115, Winter 2020, pp. 75–88)

Trout, Colette: ‘From Le Bébé to Tom est mort: Writing the Unspeakable Terror of Motherhood’ in Marie Darrieussecq ed. by Helena Chadderton and Gill Rye (Dalhousie French Studies [special issue] 98, Spring 2012)

—: Marie Darrieussecq ou voir le monde à neuf (Amsterdam: Brill/Rodopi, 2016)

—: Les animaux et nous chez Marie Darrieussecq : une coexistence indispensable’ (Dalhousie French Studies,115, Winter 2020, pp. 11–9)

Willocq, Philippe: ‘Absence de Precisions sur les vagues (2008) de Marie Darrieussecq’ in Absence, enquête et quête dans le roman francophone  ed. by Alice Delphine Tang and Patricia Bissa Enama (Berne: Peter Lang, 2010)

Wrónska, Olga: ‘Ménage-à-trois: maman – bébé – psychoanalyse’ in Relations familiales dans les littératures française et francophone des XXe et XXIe siècles: II. La figure de la mère ed. by Murielle Lucie Clément and Sabine Van Wesemael (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008, pp. 227-234)

—: ‘“La faim, c’est moi”: L’identité narrative au féminin’ (Estudios Románicos 19, 2010, pp. 293-301)

Young, Morag: ‘”J’ai mal au je-nous”: Marie Darrieussecq’s Innovative Use of Personal Pronouns’ in Marie Darrieussecq ed. by Helena Chadderton and Gill Rye (Dalhousie French Studies [special issue] 98, Spring 2012)

Interviews/in the Media

Barraband, Maryvonne and Gassmann, Xavier: ‘Entretien avec Marie Darrieussecq’ (La lettre de l’enfance et de l’adolescence 59, 2005, pp. 9-16)

Barnet, Marie-Claire: Nouvelles Correspondances: Courriel avec Marie Darrieussecq' (Email interview in French with English translation, 31 May 2010)

Barnet, Marie-Claire and Shirley Jordan: ‘Interview with Marie Darrieussecq’ in Space, Place and Landscape in Contemporary Francophone Women’s Writing, ed. by Marie-Claire Barnet and Shirley Jordan (Dalhousie French Studies, 93 [Special issue], Winter 2010, pp. 123-9)

Baudet, M.: 'Marie Darrieussecq, auteur à haute résolution' (Libre Culture, 19 May 1999, p. 21)

Bourcier, Jean-Pierre: 'Marie Darrieussecq: "européenne, féministe et athée"' (La Tribune, 13 November 1996, p. 20)

Clouzeau, Fanny and Le Bricquir, Karine: Marie Darrieussecq parle des Éditions POL. (Paris: Presses universitaires de Paris 10, 2006)

Garcin, Jérôme: 'Marie Darrieussecq: l'après-Truismes' (Le Nouvel Observateur, 1684, 19-25 February 1998, pp. 88-90)

Gaudemar, Antoine de: 'Darrieussecq, du cochon au volatil' (Libération [Livres], 26 February 1998, pp. 1-111)

Gaudet, Jeannette: ‘“Des livres sur la liberté”: conversation avec Marie Darrieussecq’ (Dalhousie French Studies 59, 2002, pp. 108-118)

Henley, J.: 'Parables of Panic' (The Guardian [G2], 16 June 1999, p. 16)

Huttin, Geneviève: 'La Nuit rêvée de Marie Darrieussecq' (Les Nuits de France Culture, 22/23 November 2014) available online at https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/les-nuits-de-france-culture/la-nuit-revee-de-marie-darrieussecq-entretien-13?xtmc=darrieussecq&xtnp=1&xtcr=6

Kaprièlian, Nelly: 'Écrire, écrire, pourquoi?: Entretien de Marie Darrieussecq avec Nelly Kaprièlian' (Paris : Éditions de la bibliothèque publique d'information, 2010)

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