Inseparable--a tender, concise and razor-sharp never-before-published novel by feminist icon Simone de Beauvoir--is a star-crossed love story of two female friends, Sylvie and Andrée. They meet as schoolgirls in post-World War I Paris, immediately becoming close friends and confidantes exploring the ever-imposing world of womanhood together. But as they grow older, Sylvie watches with concern as Andrée's passionate sensibility threatens to overwhelm her. Meanwhile, Andrée struggles to find balance between her aspirations, the expectations of her family and the machinations of men. As Andrée's zeal begins to spill into self-inflicted violence, Sylvie becomes desperate to protect her friend against herself and against a world that is determined to entrap them through their own desires.
Perfect for fans of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, Inseparable is as intelligent and urgent as Beauvoir's philosophical and other fictional texts, yet it offers a gentler and more intimate look at the vulnerabilities of girlhood. Sylvie and Andrée's friendship is based on Beauvoir's own fervent friendship with her childhood companion Zaza Lacoin. The novel, as a result, is an aching testament to the bonds built between women and the inexpressible type of love that often goes unacknowledged. Sylvie's interior life is wonderfully portrayed in all its sensitivity and rawness, but it is Andrée's tumultuous lifestyle and desperate desire to love that makes the novel come alive with yearning and disappointment. With simple-seeming prose, a vivid and minute attention to detail and a wistfully tragic tone, Inseparable haunts readers with the promise of what could have been amidst a world as real and inescapable as Beauvoir's own. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor