Los nombres epicenos

Epic names are those that, like Claude or Dominique, can be both feminine and masculine. In this story Claude is him and Dominique is her. He insists on marrying her and, after taking her to live in Paris, he insists even more on leaving her pregnant. Finally his daughter is born, who is named Epicene, taken from a play by Ben Jonson, a contemporary of Shakespeare, and is also an epic name. When the child is born, the father's procreative obsession becomes indifference towards the daughter. Driven by a social ambition also out of proportion, he convinced his wife to befriend a couple of the upper financial bourgeoisie, the Queen and Jean-Louis, whose daughters go to school with the Epicene. A couple with whom Claude maintains an old secret bond in the form of an offense. And so this novel tells the story of a double rejection and a double revenge - one of triumph; the other, destined for failure-. Nothomb explores with the insight that characterizes her the complex relationships between parents and children and the resentment of unrequited love. Thus, he constructs a kind of perverse contemporary fairy tale, a cruel fable, narrated with conciseness and forcefulness.