by Victoria Bromley
What makes this book so insightful is how vulnerable the narrator allows herself to become as she expresses her frustrations and fears about giving into her body’s desires.
Being the third title we have received from Heloise Press, Satisfaction is yet another deeply intimate portrayal of women’s bodies and the internal conflict between being a woman and a mother, “I am both mother and woman, two bodies in opposition.”
Satisfaction follows Mme, a French woman, who moves to Algeria with her husband and son to start a new life. However, Mme struggles to connect with the landscape of this new place so begins writing her thoughts in a notebook to distract herself and make sense of her emotions. When her son becomes friends with a girl who doesn’t identify with Mme’s understanding of femininity, she wants to close her son off from this alien girl, yet finds herself getting closer to the family through the alluring pull of the girl’s mother, Catherine.
The reader is immediately immersed in Mme’s mind through her deeply honest and raw voice. We are carried with her, a part of her journey, as she navigates this new land and foreign desire for a woman, “I have no knowledge of women’s bodies. I don’t know what a female body can offer another woman, what it can represent for her.” This sensual longing is fragmented by her insecurities and inability to give her sexuality the strength to reveal itself. It almost feels intrusive to be reading her notebook entries, so chaotic and intimate, but it shows how she is wanting to be understood, a desperate cry to be heard.
I can write in this notebook that I don’t like myself. I’m not talking about beauty, I don’t think I’m ugly, there’s no such thing as ugliness, there is always something to take from a face, a body.
Satisfaction by Nina Bouraoui
Grappling to understand her own identity, Mme is confused and tormented by her son’s new friend who likes to call herself Bruce, after Bruce Lee. She wears baggy clothes and adopts more masculine qualities. There is a constant debate throughout the book regarding what it is to be feminine, “But femininity should not be confused with fragility. They are not the same.”
It takes time to learn who one is, to get to know oneself. I grew up with a brother, I’m still growing up, with a son, a husband, in Algiers, the city of men. What I lack is a woman beside me.
Satisfaction by Nina Bouraoui
There is an internal battle, a journey Mme takes through scribbling in her notebook, to find satisfaction in her life. From her family, but mainly from herself. She wrestles with this conundrum of pleasing her family, being the mother she has been assigned, as well as listening to her own womanly desires. However it felt as if Mme didn’t want to find peace and preferred to live in a state of perplexity. She sought out new struggles and purposefully put herself into situations where her confusions brewed.
My dual personality: the woman and the anti-woman who seeks out difficulty, craves it, who needs violence to feel the blood flowing in her veins.
Satisfaction by Nina Bouraoui
Satisfaction is a beautiful addition to the books we have reviewed for Heloise Press, exploring the themes of motherhood, being a woman, and coming to terms with oneself.
Other books we have reviewed include What Concerns Us and The Memory of the Air.
Buy yourself a copy of Satisfaction here.
swim press 