It's hard to resist a novel that explores desire, psychoanalysis, and feminism in unbridled French-literature style. Scaffolding is the first novel from Lauren Elkin, author of Flâneuse and Art Monsters, and readers should buckle up, because Elkin doesn't skirt the polite edges.
In 2019, Anna is a psychoanalyst in Paris, taking time off to process a miscarriage by doing anything and everything but thinking about it. With her husband working in London, she renovates her apartment, ponders the nature of desire, and spends an increasing amount of time with her neighbor Clémentine, a young woman involved in a feminist group protesting violence against women.
In 1972, Florence and her husband, Henry, live in the same Paris apartment that Anna will move into decades later. Florence wants a child but Henry is, unfortunately, an infantile egotist. He argues against having a child, telling Florence, "But you have a baby, remember?" In the meantime, Florence renovates the apartment. The novel's threads of connection across the decades are delightful, as when Florence puts up brown wallpaper that Anna calls "horrible" and rips out.
Elkin's themes are far ranging, complex, and fearlessly probe the darker sides of human nature as both women push at the concepts that bind relationships such as the value of fidelity. Elkin questions the nature of desire, considering possibilities like whether it "stems from foundational loss, the moment of separation from our mothers." Her narrative boldness surfaces intriguing ideas about the psyche. Sometimes, as Florence argues in defense of her brown wallpaper, "It's more honest to make it ugly." --Carol Caley, writer