Not One Day
Anne Garréta
(Author)
Emma Ramadan
(Translator)
Description
Winner of the 2018 Albertine Prize
Finalist for the 2018 Lamba Literary Awards
Finalist for the 2018 French American Foundation Translation Prize
Not One Day begins with a maxim: "Not one day without a woman." What follows is an intimate, erotic, and sometimes bitter recounting of loves and lovers past, breathtakingly written, exploring the interplay between memory, fantasy, and desire.
"For life is too short to submit to reading poorly written books and sleeping with women one does not love."
Anne Garréta, author of the groundbreaking novel Sphinx (Deep Vellum, 2015), is a member of the renowned Oulipo literary group. Not One Day won the Prix Médicis in 2002, recognizing Garréta as an author "whose fame does not yet match their talent."
Product Details
Price
$14.95
$13.75
Publisher
Deep Vellum Publishing
Publish Date
May 16, 2017
Pages
115
Dimensions
5.0 X 7.99 X 0.27 inches | 0.29 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781941920541
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About the Author
Anne F. Garréta is the first member of the Oulipo to be born after the founding of the Oulipo. A normalienne (graduate of France's prestigious École normale supérieure) and lecturer at the University of Rennes II since 1995, Garréta was co-opted into the Oulipo in April 2000. She also teaches at Duke University as a Research Professor of Literature and Romance Studies. Her first novel, Sphinx hailed by critics in France and the US alike, tells a love story between two people without giving any indication of grammatical gender for the narrator or the narrator's love interest. She met Oulipian Jacques Roubaud in Vienna in 1993, and was invited to present her work at an Oulipo seminar in March 1994 and again in May 2000, which led to her joining the Oulipo. She won France's prestigious Prix Médicis in 2002 for this novel, Not One Day, awarded each year to an author whose "fame does not yet match their talent" (she is the second Oulipian to win the award--Georges Perec won in 1978). Emma Ramadan is a graduate of Brown University, received her Master's in Cultural Translation from the American University of Paris, and recently completed a Fulbright Fellowship for literary translation in Morocco. Her translation of Anne Garreta's Sphinx was published by Deep Vellum in spring 2015 and was nominated for both the PEN Translation Prize and the Best Translated Book Award. Her translation of Anne Parian's prose poem Monospace was released by La Presse in fall 2015, and her translation of Fouad Laroui's Prix Goncourt story collection The Curious Case of Dassoukine's Trousers was published in spring 2016. Her forthcoming translations of Laroui's debut novel in English The Tribulations of the Last Sjilmassi, and Brice Matthiuessent's Revenge of the Translator will be published by Deep Vellum in 2017.
Reviews
Winner of Prix Médicis 2002 One of Literary Hub's "30 Books We're Looking Forward to" in 2017 "In Not One Day, originally published in 2002 in French, Garréta permits us to inhabit her body through memory, embracing the messiness of desire, not cisheteronormativity." -- Cheyenne Heckerman, Anomaly "Winner of the Prix Medicis, this intense collection of Garreta's memories of past loves--written under strict Oulipian constraints--is at times at once tender, bitter, and intimate." -- Literary Hub "Like a skilled performance artist, Garréta... simultaneously inhabits bodies and spaces." -- Youmna Chlala, BOMB Magazine "Not One Day is a novel both fluid and complex, crowded and lonely, and rooted in an uncomfortable position." -- Eva Domeneghini "A master of thought and language, an astounding authority and elegance." -- Anne Serre, Marie Claire One of Flavorwire's "22 Essential Women Writers to Read in Translation" "Garréta more or less perfected the post-modern confessional, doing so with a self-awareness that many authors fail to accomplish... Not One Day is a casual revelation; a delight." -- Sean Redmond, fields Magazine "Deep Vellum has brought out one of the best books I've read this year, one whose compact nature contains more room inside than might be guessed from its modest exterior. Happily, Anne Garréta's ambition is to create books that are not the products of an assembly line." -- Jeff Bursey, The Winnipeg Review
Winner of the 2018 Albertine Prize Winner of Prix Médicis 2002 Finalist for the 30th Annual Lambda Literary Award Nominated for the 2018 French American Foundation Translation Prize "Although the book swerves briefly into the erotic, the majority of the text is a heady meditation. Where we expect to find a confession of the body, we are in fact met with a confession of the mind, as Garréta laments the imposition of hetero normative gender roles upon queer desire. This leaves the reader with another question: how can we invent alternate ways to express desire outside of hetero dichotomy?" --Liz von Klemperer, Lambda Literary "This searingly beautiful book stands out in its ability to reveal and disrupt the desires -- and expectations -- readers have of writers." --Ann Mayhew, The Riveter "Not One Day matches the elusive, circuitous narratives with baroque and analytical prose. The novel's elliptical style gives rise to its unsentimental focus on desire, memory, and fantasy as objects that flourish in voids. Desire for something arises when its possession is impossible." --Sebastian Sarti, The Rumpus "An unusual spin on autofiction, Not One Day is a lively, intriguing little read." --M.A. Orthofer, Complete Review "For a work so heartfelt and raw, it comes as a surprise that Not One Day would turn the mirror more on us than on Garreta. By focusing so tightly on her personal experience, Garreta takes us beyond narrative and into the conflicts of the mind and soul, transforming personal love affairs into something ethereal and universal, and we are powerless to resist the temptation to conduct similar experiments of memory on our own loves." --Laura Farmer, Cedar Rapids Gazette "This slim little volume is intimate, packed full of rich sensuality and eroticism captured in stunning translation. Some women are no more than encounters, others long-lasting affairs, but all stir up their own unique revelations, set Garréta on winding trails of thought. Unresolved tensions feel familiar, and reliving forgotten fondnesses along with our narrator inspires quiet reflection on our part as readers as well. This is a pearl of a book." --Caroline Froh, Boswell Book Company (Staff Pick) One of Literary Hub's "30 Books We're Looking Forward to" in 2017 "Winner of the Prix Medicis, this intense collection of Garreta's memories of past loves--written under strict Oulipian constraints--is at times at once tender, bitter, and intimate." -- Literary Hub "Not One Day is a novel both fluid and complex, crowded and lonely, and rooted in an uncomfortable position." -- Eva Domeneghini "A master of thought and language, an astounding authority and elegance." -- Anne Serre, Marie Claire One of Flavorwire's "22 Essential Women Writers to Read in Translation" "An elegant, bitter, intimate, and intricate journey through the byways of queer desire and intellectualism." -- Unabridged Bookstore
"Like a skilled performance artist, Garréta, the first member of Oulipo to be born after the group's founding, simultaneously inhabits bodies and spaces--airports, bars, nightclubs, and so on. Desire is exhilarating when it is a vanishing trace, but repulsive when it's a stand-in for writing or being wanted--or when it's contained in the other's body, a submissive one, or the one 'taking up as little space as possible.'" -- Youmna Chlala, BOMB Magazine "Oulipo member Anne Garreta gives herself a rigid homework assignment and along the way upends the boundaries of autofiction. Her musings, translated by Emma Ramadan, on all the people she's desired or those who have desired her are moving, funny, erotic, and magical. Her gem on American 'highway music' is worth it in itself." --Kyle Alderice, Book Culture, Center for the Art of Translation
"Garréta's work revolves around dismantling any reflexes we might have, as writers and readers. She roots her intellectualized reflections on desire into the concrete experience of desire, showing how we are simultaneously living and narrating ourselves at the time, and what kind of fictions underpin this constant dynamic." -- A.K. Afferez, Ploughshares
"What is so extraordinary about Garréta's take on the confessional is the way her formidable intellect braids eros and philosophy together: the women are (di)splayed in alphabetically-ordered vignettes written--and translated--with breathtaking precision and bite. The lovers, for the most part, slip intentionally out of focus, but the desire (or in some cases, the lack thereof) that drives each encounter is always drawn with the clearest of lines. It is ultimately this desire, and the act of remembering, itself, that seem to be the true protagonists of this indispensable, bracing parade. From B*, with her "sensual proclivity for analysis," to D*, a "typically desirable woman, you saw her in and through the eyes of others," and H*, "a siren fastened to her chosen rock," the accumulation pushes us toward the conclusion that the discovery of the other is always also, or perhaps only, a discovery of oneself."Heather Cleary, Book MarksWinner of the 2018 Albertine Prize Winner of Prix Médicis 2002 Finalist for the 30th Annual Lambda Literary Award Nominated for the 2018 French American Foundation Translation Prize "Although the book swerves briefly into the erotic, the majority of the text is a heady meditation. Where we expect to find a confession of the body, we are in fact met with a confession of the mind, as Garréta laments the imposition of hetero normative gender roles upon queer desire. This leaves the reader with another question: how can we invent alternate ways to express desire outside of hetero dichotomy?" --Liz von Klemperer, Lambda Literary "This searingly beautiful book stands out in its ability to reveal and disrupt the desires -- and expectations -- readers have of writers." --Ann Mayhew, The Riveter "Not One Day matches the elusive, circuitous narratives with baroque and analytical prose. The novel's elliptical style gives rise to its unsentimental focus on desire, memory, and fantasy as objects that flourish in voids. Desire for something arises when its possession is impossible." --Sebastian Sarti, The Rumpus "An unusual spin on autofiction, Not One Day is a lively, intriguing little read." --M.A. Orthofer, Complete Review "For a work so heartfelt and raw, it comes as a surprise that Not One Day would turn the mirror more on us than on Garreta. By focusing so tightly on her personal experience, Garreta takes us beyond narrative and into the conflicts of the mind and soul, transforming personal love affairs into something ethereal and universal, and we are powerless to resist the temptation to conduct similar experiments of memory on our own loves." --Laura Farmer, Cedar Rapids Gazette "This slim little volume is intimate, packed full of rich sensuality and eroticism captured in stunning translation. Some women are no more than encounters, others long-lasting affairs, but all stir up their own unique revelations, set Garréta on winding trails of thought. Unresolved tensions feel familiar, and reliving forgotten fondnesses along with our narrator inspires quiet reflection on our part as readers as well. This is a pearl of a book." --Caroline Froh, Boswell Book Company (Staff Pick) One of Literary Hub's "30 Books We're Looking Forward to" in 2017 "Winner of the Prix Medicis, this intense collection of Garreta's memories of past loves--written under strict Oulipian constraints--is at times at once tender, bitter, and intimate." -- Literary Hub "Not One Day is a novel both fluid and complex, crowded and lonely, and rooted in an uncomfortable position." -- Eva Domeneghini "A master of thought and language, an astounding authority and elegance." -- Anne Serre, Marie Claire One of Flavorwire's "22 Essential Women Writers to Read in Translation" "An elegant, bitter, intimate, and intricate journey through the byways of queer desire and intellectualism." -- Unabridged Bookstore
"Like a skilled performance artist, Garréta, the first member of Oulipo to be born after the group's founding, simultaneously inhabits bodies and spaces--airports, bars, nightclubs, and so on. Desire is exhilarating when it is a vanishing trace, but repulsive when it's a stand-in for writing or being wanted--or when it's contained in the other's body, a submissive one, or the one 'taking up as little space as possible.'" -- Youmna Chlala, BOMB Magazine "Oulipo member Anne Garreta gives herself a rigid homework assignment and along the way upends the boundaries of autofiction. Her musings, translated by Emma Ramadan, on all the people she's desired or those who have desired her are moving, funny, erotic, and magical. Her gem on American 'highway music' is worth it in itself." --Kyle Alderice, Book Culture, Center for the Art of Translation
