Bøger af Constance Debré

Friheden kommer altid med en pris. Kompromisløs autofiktiv roman om frihed, seksualitet og moderskab fra en af Frankrigs mest interessante nye litterære stemmer.Constance Debré har forladt sit topjob som jurist, sin store lejlighed midt i Paris og sin mand gennem tyve år. Da hun fortæller sin eksmand, at hun er begyndt at se kvinder, trækker han hende ind i en absurd strid om forældremyndigheden, og hun mister retten til at se sin lille søn, Paul. Mens hun venter på rettens afgørelse, kaster hun sig ud i sit nye liv med en lidenskabelig og trodsig intensitet.I en intens og rytmisk prosa kredser Constance Debré om seksualitet og frihed, kærlighed og moderskab. For hvem dikterer vilkårene for kærlighed? Findes der virkelig noget rigtigt og forkert, når det kommer til at elske nogen? Og hvad vil det sige at leve sandt og frit?

Playboy er en kompromisløs skildring af forfatteren Constance Debrés forvandling fra topadvokat og mor i en kernefamilie til lesbisk playboy og forfatter. Constance Debré er født ind i den franske overklasse, hun er topjurist, barnebarn af en fransk premierminister og bor med sin mand og søn i en luksuslejlighed midt i Paris. Men en dag bryder hun op, forlader det hele – ægteskab, karriere, det stabile liv gennem tyve år – for at springe ud som forfatter og lesbisk. I en række korte, skarpe vignetter beskriver forfatterens sine første møder med kvinder og reaktionerne fra eksmanden, sønnen og faren. Fortælleren ser på verden med nye øjne og må stille spørgsmål ved alt, hvad der ligger under overfladen i hendes tidligere så velordnede liv. I en skrift der er både lakonisk, aggressiv, provokerende og radikalt sandhedssøgende undersøger hun størrelser som køn, ægteskab, egoisme, selvopofrelse, penge og familie – og det privilegium, der ligger i at kunne bevæge sig ned ad den sociale rangstige. Constance Debré skriver sig mod sin egen frigørelse, en ny identitet og seksualitet. Resultatet er en rå og kompromisløs dokumentation af den forvandling, der har gjort hende til en af de mest interessante stemmer i ny fransk litteratur. Playboy er forhistorien til den anmelderroste Love Me Tender som udkom på dansk sidste år

Constance seemingly had it all: born into a wealthy and influential family; a career as a successful lawyer, love from her husband and son. But behind this veneer was the stifling pressure to conform to the boundaries of French society within which she could not be herself and survive.Playboy traces one woman's transition from straight lawyer, mother and wife to the buzz-cut and tattooed lesbian taking the Parisian literary scene by storm. Constance is a detached narrator as she takes us through the quiet boredom of her life with her husband Laurent, the betrayal of his affair, the arrival of her son, and the influence of drugs and alcohol on her relationship with her family. Unburdened by marital and familial obligations, a new Constance emerges, free to explore the complexities of her love for women and herself. An affecting and compelling chronicle of transgression and the balance of power, Playboy is an unflinching account of Constance Debré's discovery of bachelorhood. Translated by Holly James

In the world of the bourgeoisie and aristocrats, names are everything. They are currency that cannot be bartered but give their owners access, respect and above all, protection from the laws that govern those unfortunate souls who belong to classes without names, people who might as well be nameless. To the narrator of Constance Debré's third novel, her name is a dead weight to cut herself free from. Tracing a family legacy of aristocrats and politicians, including her late grandfather, a former president of France, the narrator unravels a tapestry of relationships and bonds made fraught by addiction, pride and grief. As her parents struggle with substance abuse and their own histories, our narrator becomes resolute in her choice to live an existence unencumbered by responsibility, expectations, and a name she has long been ready to part with.

A novel of lesbian identity and motherhood, and the societal pressures that place them in opposition.The daughter of an illustrious French family whose members include a former Prime Minister, a model, and a journalist, Constance Debré abandoned her marriage and legal career in 2015 to write full-time and begin a relationship with a woman. Her transformation from affluent career woman to broke single lesbian was chronicled in her 2018 novel Play boy, praised by Virginie Despentes for its writing that is at once “flippant and consumed by anxiety.”In Love Me Tender, Debré goes on to further describe the consequences of that life-changing decision. Her husband, Laurent, seeks to permanently separate her from their eight-year old child. Vilified in divorce court by her ex, she loses custody of her son and is allowed to see him only once every two weeks for a supervised hour. Deprived of her child, Debré gives up her two-bedroom apartment and bounces between borrowed apartments, hotel rooms, and a studio the size of a cell. She involves herself in brief affairs with numerous women who vary in age, body type, language, and lifestyle. But the closer she gets to them, the more distant she feels. Apart from cigarettes and sex, her life is completely ascetic: a regime of intense reading and writing, interrupted only by sleep and athletic swimming. She shuns any place where she might observe children, avoiding playgrounds and parks “as if they were cluster bombs ready to explode, riddling her body with pieces of shrapnel.”  Writing graphically about sex, rupture, longing, and despair in the first person, Debré’s work is often compared with the punk-era writings of Guillaume Dustan and Herve Guibert, whose work she has championed. As she says of Guibert: “I love him because he says I and he’s a pornographer. That seems to be essential when you write. Otherwise you don’t say anything.” But in Love Me Tender, Debré speaks courageously of love in its many forms, reframing what it means to be a mother beyond conventional expectations.