Rien ne va Plus

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From Publishers Weekly

In her first English translation, Greek novelist Karapanou (1946–2008) details a complicated marriage between a successful veterinarian and an incipient writer, with several intriguing outcomes. On their wedding night, naïve bride Louise witnesses her icily handsome, urbane husband, Alkiviadis, proposition a boy in a bar. Humiliated but attracted by her husband's homosexuality, Louise is nonetheless repelled by his need to control her; what follows is a crushing divorce and, then, a suicide. But that's just the first draft; Karapanou resets her story with recombined leads and an even darker slant; in this version of events, Alkis is an adoring husband who wants a baby, and Louise is a spoiled, manipulative, self-destructive character repulsed by Alkis's offer of stability and unconditional love. Ghastly details of pregnancy and abortion alternate with charming episodes of travel and discovery, such as Louise's visit to America in mismatched company. Beginning simply, this remarkable tale escalates in conflict and complexity, and proves even more engaging the second time through. (Dec.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Setting the wheel spinning, a roulette croupier traditionally says, rien ne va plus, meaning no more bets, the die is cast. The phrase applies ironically to the story of a bad marriage that Karapanou tells twice from the wife’s perspective, blaming first the man, then the woman. In both tellings, the marriage seems doomed very early on, certainly before the wedding. What happens isn’t chance, it’s fate. In the first account, the man claims to love the woman but, starting immediately after the ceremony, lures young men to his bed and insists she watch. The couple never cohabits, soon separates, and then divorces. The two don’t communicate at all for two years. To the last, he is a self-centered monster. The second time through, he is heterosexual but utterly pusillanimous, while she, duplicitous from the start, progressively distances herself from him. Both versions conclude after a would-be tragedy that fizzles. A prayer-inflected succession of aphorisms about beginning and ending links the two tellings. Written unemotionally and with poetic concentration, this is a bitter, modernist morsel. --Ray Olson

About the Author

Margarita Karapanou was born in Athens in 1946. One of Greece’s most beloved authors, she was the author of five novels. Her first novel, Kassandra and the Wolf, was translated into four languages, and was originally published in English by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1974. The Sleepwalker has likewise been translated into four languages, and Karapanou’s own French translation of the book, Le Somnambule (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), won the French national prize for the best foreign novel, an honor previously awarded to Lawrence Durrell, Jorge Luis Borges, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. She died in 2008.

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