This is a new translation by Lauren Elkin of de Beauvoir's 1966 [book:Les belles images|1202728]. Drawing broadly on her [book:Le deuxième sexe, I|21124]/[book:The Second Sex|8500], it's indicative of second-wave feminism, fictionalising the fate of a woman who realises that she has been forced into a series of postures or images labelled 'woman'. Her bourgeois comfort, her career as a copywriter, her husband, lover and two children are supposed to be all she needs for spiritual well-being, and her discontent is pathologised as 'depression' - a mild form of the 'madness' that is so often the diagnosis of women who do not conform to the feminine 'images' of their time.

Importantly, de Beauvoir shows here three generations of women: Laurence's mother who is set adrift when she is abandoned by her lover (who, of course, at 56 decides he'd rather have a 19 year old...), Laurence herself as that mediating generation of women of around de Beauvoir's own age, and her daughter Catherine, who is being sent off to see a psychiatrist when Laurence intervenes to give her child a liberation that she never had. In that sense, this is an optimistic narrative of feminist progression, written at a time when de Beauvoir might well have been shocked and despairing at the current roll-back of basic female rights over our bodies that was in her future.

As a novel this feels like fictionalised political philosophy - perhaps targeting an audience who might not have chosen to read The Second Sex - it's palatable, it's still relatable (even if there's little new here for today's women), it's a salutary reminder of where feminism has come from. It's a quick read and still has things to say to today's feminists.