Scaffolding A Novel
Scaffolding A Novel by Lauren Elkin, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on September 17, 2024, is a literary exploration of love, desire, and the complexities of family life set against the backdrop of Paris. This debut novel intertwines the lives of two couples across multiple timelines, focusing on their experiences with marriage, fidelity, and the challenges of pregnancy. The narrative unfolds in a Belleville apartment, where the characters confront personal and societal upheavals that shape their relationships.
Readers will find a rich tapestry of emotions and experiences as Anna, a psychoanalyst in 2019, grapples with her past while renovating her kitchen and forming a bond with her neighbor Clémentine, a member of a feminist collective. Meanwhile, in 1972, Florence and Henry navigate their own kitchen renovation, intertwined with their aspirations and uncertainties about parenthood. Scaffolding delves into the ways our homes reflect our memories and the enduring connections we maintain with those we’ve loved, offering insights into the human experience across generations. This edition spans 400 pages and is presented in English.
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A Best Book of the Year: Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe, The Week, The New Statesman
A Must-Read: The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, Marie Claire, Frieze, Literary Hub, The Millions, BBC, Our Culture, i news
“Sexy, intelligent . . . biting, too.” —Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair
The debut novel by the acclaimed author of Flâneuse and Art Monsters, Lauren Elkin’s Scaffolding is a story of Paris, desire, love, psychoanalysis, and the turbulent affairs of two couples across time.
Paris, 2019. An apartment in Belleville. Following a miscarriage and a breakdown, Anna, a psychoanalyst, finds herself unable to return to work. Instead, she obsesses over a kitchen renovation and befriends a new neighbor—a younger woman called Clémentine who has just moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective.
Paris, 1972. The same apartment in Belleville. Florence and Henry are renovating their kitchen. She is finishing her degree in psychology, dropping into feminist activities, and devotedly attending the groundbreaking, infamous seminars held by the renowned analyst Jacques Lacan. She is hoping to conceive their first child, though Henry isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood.
Two couples, fifty years apart, face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy. They inhabit this same small space in separate but similar times—times charged with political upheaval and intellectual controversy. A novel in the key of Éric Rohmer, Lauren Elkin’s Scaffolding is about the way our homes collect and hold our memories and our stories, about the bonds we create and the difficulty of ever fully severing them, about the ways all the people we’ve loved live on in us.
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