Description
Quintessential Anne Serre—this restless, prowling novel explores love as a form of greed, and confused need as one shape of bereftness
Anne Serre offers here, in her third book in English, her most direct novel to date. The Beginners is unpredictable, sensual, exhilarating, oddly moral, perverse, absurd—and unforgettable.
Reviews
"Genuinely original—and, often, very quietly so. Prim and racy, seriously weird and seriously excellent, The Governesses is not a treatise but an aria, and one delivered with perfect pitch." — Parul Seghal, New York Times Book Review
"Hypnotic, enchanting." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Strange, beguiling: a jewel." — Kirkus
"[A] wry, unconventional novel about a woman's desire." — The New Yorker
"Her books that have been translated into English—The Governesses, The Fool and Other Moral Tales and The Beginners—have a glamour in the older sense of the word, that of witchcraft. These are books that, in their concern with the properties of fiction—plots, narrator, genre, characters—use these very elements to beguile." — Rhian Sasseen, The Point
"The Beginners is as much a celebration of the dizzying excesses of female desire as Serre’s other work. Even in comparatively realist mode, Serre is a seductress." — Becca Rothfeld, Bookforum
Also By: Anne Serre 
A Leopard-Skin Hat
Paperback, 2023
A quintessential early novel about an intense friendship, by the winner of the 2020 Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle.
The Fool and Other Moral Tales
Paperback, 2020
From the brilliant, sui generis Anne Serre—author of the celebrated Governesses—come three delicious, thoroughly out-of-the-way tales.
The Fool and Other Moral Tales
E Book, 2019
From the brilliant, sui generis Anne Serre—author of the celebrated Governesses—come three delicious, thoroughly out-of-the-way tales.
The Governesses
Paperback, 2018
Publishers Weekly Best Books in Fiction 2018The sensational US debut of a major French writer—an intense, delicious meringue of a novella
The Governesses
E Book, 2018
Publishers Weekly Best Books in Fiction 2018The sensational US debut of a major French writer—an intense, delicious meringue of a novella
Also By: Mark Hutchinson
A Leopard-Skin Hat
Paperback, 2023
A quintessential early novel about an intense friendship, by the winner of the 2020 Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle.The Fool and Other Moral Tales
Paperback, 2020
From the brilliant, sui generis Anne Serre—author of the celebrated Governesses—come three delicious, thoroughly out-of-the-way tales.The Fool and Other Moral Tales
E Book, 2019
From the brilliant, sui generis Anne Serre—author of the celebrated Governesses—come three delicious, thoroughly out-of-the-way tales.The Governesses
Paperback, 2018
Publishers Weekly Best Books in Fiction 2018The sensational US debut of a major French writer—an intense, delicious meringue of a novella
The Governesses
E Book, 2018
Publishers Weekly Best Books in Fiction 2018The sensational US debut of a major French writer—an intense, delicious meringue of a novella
