Part memoir, part biography, part cultural meander, an irresistibly intelligent literary walk through the lives of wandering women- about how, by putting one foot in front of the other, we can sometimes stumble upon different routes in our lives
Lauren Elkin is the author of several books, including Fl neuse- Women Walk the City. Her co-translation (with Charlotte Mandell) of Claude Arnaud's biography of Jean Cocteau won the 2017 French-American Foundation's translation award. After twenty years in Paris, she now lives in London.
An uplifting, gender-bending critique of how women negotiate
public space -- Deborah Levy * Guardian, Book of the Year *
Deliciously spiky and seditious, she takes her readers on
a rich, intelligent and lively meander through cultural
history, biography, literary criticism, urban topography and
memoir... I defy anyone to read this celebratory study and not
feel inspired to take to the streets in one way or another. --
Lucy Scholes * Observer *
Well researched and larded with examples, this picaresque
account of a picaresque longing successfully paints women back into
the city... Elkin reboots the appetite to go walking and
thinking in the city, which can only be a good thing. * Evening
Standard *
Flaneuse is not simply a reclaiming of space, but also of a
suppressed intellectual and cultural history. Finding ways
to reframe images of women walking and to reverse male gazes,
Flaneuse builds on recent work by Rebecca Solnit and the
artist Laura Oldfield Ford, among others, with striking
intellectual vigour and clear, enrapturing prose.
* Financial Times *
The thoughtful urban stroller Lauren Elkin is a self-appointed heir
to Woolf's 'street haunter'. A memoir, a travelogue and an
eminently likeable work of literary criticism, Flaneuse is
more like a song sung under Elkin's breath. [...] At its best, her
book evokes reading aloud... reading your own life through the
novels that form part of it. -- Gaby Wood * Daily Telegraph *
Wonderful... a joyful genealogy of the female urban walker. The
book's narrative meanders brilliantly and appropriately across
several times periods at once... Elkin's Flaneuse does not
simply wander aimlessly, any more than Elkin does herself in this
elegant book: she uses her reflection to question, challenge and
create anew the life that she observes. -- Lara Feigel * Guardian
*
An intense meditation on what it means to be a women and walk out
in the world. Flaneuse encourages its readers to lace up
their shoes and go for a walk. Elkin lets the reader become a
companion to many women who have thought seriously about the
relationship between a woman and the path she chooses to tread. --
Erica Wagner * New Statesman *
I've been waiting for years to see the history of women walkers in
the city added to the critical literature of the flaneur--and here,
in Lauren Elkin's really smart and lovely book -- Vivian
Gornick
Engaging, inspiring and vigorous... The persuasiveness with which
she urges us to rethink and expand our understanding of the art of
flanerie, together with the force of her insights and the strength
and weight of her voice, leaves us with a contribution to the field
that feels singular. Buy it, read it, talk about it. And carry it
with you in your mind when you next go walking in the city. --
Matthew Adams * The National *
Flaneuse offers a rich engagement with the "psychogeography"
of 20th-century literature and the contemporary city... A rich,
rewarding pedalogue -- Martin Doyle and Sara Keating * Irish Times
*
In her richly evocative and absorbing debut, cultural critic Elkin
homes in on the female version of the flaneur . . . In this
insightful mix of cultural history and memoir, Elkin emerges at the
protagonist as she mines her personal journey from the suburbs of
Long Island to her current home in Paris * Publishers Weekly *
Marvellously eclectic and erudite * Bookseller *
An appealing blend of memoir, scholarship, and cultural criticism .
. . Elkin's own story runs through the text like a luminous thread.
She tells us the woman-in-the-street stories of Jean Rhys, Virginia
Woolf, George Sand, Sophie Calle, Agnes Varda, and Martha Gellhorn,
but all sorts of other cultural figures appear, including Barthes,
Rilke, Baudelaire, Hemingway, Derrida, Dickens, and numerous others
. . . Enlightening walks through cities, cultural history, and a
writer's heart and soul * Kirkus *
This is a book about wandering women, the author included, who
build relationships with their cities by walking through them . . .
Women can and do make feminist statements simply by strolling
through their stomping grounds; Elkin creates an interesting and
inarguable case for this. She, too, is a wanderer and provides
compelling anecdotes about her own journeys, interspersed with
those of literary heavy-hitters George Sand, Jean Rhys, Virginia
Woolf, and others . . . This is ultimately a celebration of women.
You'll want to take a stroll by the end * Library Journal *
Inspiring * Psychologies *
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