Paresis

Isabelle Nicou Paresis (2002)
I imagine the deal of translating an entire novel from its original language - in this case French - must be a colossal headache, and one which more or less guarantees that the work had to be pretty special in the first place in order to warrant translation. Paresis, Nicou's first novel, certainly seems to qualify, and we should be doubly glad because, being fairly esoteric and philosophical, I doubt this one is likely to be Amphetamine Sulphate's chart smashing hit single - which I state as a judgement on the audience rather than the book.

Once again, I know what it's about, or know what I think it's about, but am unlikely to be able to furnish any description which really does it justice because, put simply, you just have to read the thing. I've noticed a degree of griping on social media of late along the lines of Amphetamine Sulphate having settled into a rut of publishing transgressive confessionals and not much else. The accusation doesn't really stand up to scrutiny, and Paresis is something else altogether for what that may be worth - existential philosophy as approximately linear fiction and so, I suppose, sort of traditional in that respect. Nicou seemingly spent many years studying phenomenology and so seems a good fit for the imprint, given the number of titles which have explored the gulf which divides the human body and our understanding of the same.

To clarify in more tactile terms, there's a lot of self-harm here, all mixed up with sexuality, self-loathing, and all that good stuff, despite which it defies almost all of the convenient categories which might be proposed by such ingredients. I'm not sure it's even what people usually mean by transgressive as I found only the final paragraph truly disturbing in isolation. There's masochism, although that may be too loaded and misleading a term, and as with most Amphetamine Sulphate titles, it's not really about the sex so much as it is about the power, or lack thereof, and is therefore in an entirely different class to bullshit such as the Story of O. I guess the bottom line is that Paresis pulls the reader through the sensations and memories of its narrator as she falls to pieces, affording a delirious limited view such as might be seen between bandages, and so allows us to understand perspectives which might otherwise send us all running for the hills; and it does all this in just over a hundred pages.

I'm hugely impressed.