Les mots pour le dire

by Marie Cardinal

I found this book compelling, as it was not only a narrative about the author’s dilemmas and strategies, but also about her treatment and survival. Her writing style is indisputably linked to what is called “ecriture” – that is post-modern French writing influenced by feminism – but it has a directness and grasp of everyday life, so often lacking in ‘survivor’ literature. It tells the truth; it does not encode it in jargon or mask it with slogans. Ron Moule THE WORDS TO SAY IT by Marie Cardinal, translated by Pat Goodheart, Van Vactor & Goodheart Publisher, is in the words of Bruno Bettelheim "the best account of a psychoanalysis as seen and experienced by the patient." It is the story of a healing set against the events in Algeria. Taught in over seven hundred and fifty colleges and universities as a text, and in over fifteen different departments, literature at Harvard University and in courses in medical ethics at Yale Medical School. It has received rave reviews in The London Sunda