She Loves Me - Hardcover

Esterhazy, Peter

3.75

428 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810115573 ISBN 13: 9780810115576

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 1997

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

She Loves Me is Peter Esterhazy's paean to women: beautiful and ugly, kind and nasty, fat and bony, monogamous and promiscuous, seductive, negative, rebellious, and voracious.
In ninety-seven short chapters this seductive novel contemplates love and desire and sex and hate, all from the point of view of a manly narrator who considers himself a great and successful lover, a womanizer, a man who may - or may not - be in love with all of the women of the world.
Intelligent and funny, this book is a great declaration of love and of contempt, and a philosophical exploration of the many postures and pretenses of eros. With his characteristic verbal pyrotechnics, the serenely jaded Esterhazy proves that there will always be another romance, and that love and hate spring from the same inexhaustible font.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

How does world-renowned Hungarian novelist Peter Esterhazy encounter love? In She Loves Me, you can count the ways. Although each of the 97 vignette-style chapters begins with "There's this woman," the playful waters of these narratives run deeper than the mere variations of love. Under the surface are the politics of obsessions, the body, power struggles, and the fragmented viewpoints of self that most individuals either try to piece together or try to pretend are intact and whole. The fragments praise ("I'm as important to her as new potatoes with parsley."), they promise ("She loves me. She just doesn't know it yet."), and they prod ("...she talked me into becoming what she called 'vegetarians'... because she was thinking how much better off we'd be without the pitiful wailing and whining of our bodies"). Sometimes the fragments look suspiciously familiar ("She ... uh ... loves me. My mother's memory lives on mainly as an adjunct of her goulash"), but each is a contemporary delight.

About the Author:

P�ter Esterh�zy (born 14 April 1950 in Budapest) is one of the most widely known contemporary Hungarian writers. His books are considered to be significant contributions to postwar literature. He studied mathematics at ELTE university in Budapest from 1969 to 1974; his first writings were published in literary journals in 1974. He worked as a mathematician from 1974 to 1978, and he became a freelance writer in 1978.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.