Scaffolding A Novel
Scaffolding A Novel by Lauren Elkin, published by Picador on September 16, 2025, is a literary exploration of love, desire, and the complexities of family life set against the backdrop of Paris. This 400-page novel intertwines the lives of two couples across different decades, delving into their personal struggles with marriage, fidelity, and the desire for children. The narrative unfolds in a Belleville apartment, where the characters navigate their emotional landscapes amid political and intellectual turbulence.
Readers will find a rich tapestry of experiences as Anna, a modern psychoanalyst, grapples with her past while befriending a younger neighbor involved in feminist activism. In parallel, Florence and Henry confront their own challenges in the same space fifty years earlier, reflecting on the societal changes that shape their lives. Scaffolding presents a thoughtful examination of how homes can embody memories and relationships, highlighting the enduring connections that define our existence.
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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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