L'Invitée = She Came to Stay, Simone de BeauvoirShe Came to Stay is a novel written by French author Simone de Beauvoir first published in 1943. The novel is a fictional account of her and Jean-Paul Sartre's relationship with Olga Kosakiewicz and Wanda Kosakiewicz. Set in Paris on the eve of and during World War II, the novel revolves around Françoise, whose open relationship with her partner Pierre becomes strained when they form a threesome with her younger friend Xaviere. The novel explores m...

The subject matter of this novel by Simone De Beauvoir, who was the long-term partner of famed French existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, seems a somewhat odd one for a prominent feminist. The relationship between De Beauvoir and Sartre was not a conventional one- far from it in fact- and is explored in this story of a woman suffering an existential crisis caused by the introduction of another woman to form what becomes a rather bizarre menage à trois.Françoise (quite obviously a represent...

Your guy, whom you are totally smitten with, somehow talks you into agreeing that it's OK for him to extend your relationship into a menage a trois including another, younger woman, that you don't really like very much. You're seething with jealousy, but, because of various abstract principles, you can't even admit it to yourself in so many words. So you write a novel based on real events, where you describe her as the empty-headed little bitch she is, and conclude by killing her, which you alwa...

A 40s novel in which the open relationship project between Francoise and Pierre is threatened by the arrival of the young Xavier. On one level I am always fascinated with these period novels set in Paris where the characters are found at La Dome on boulevard du Montparnasse at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning sitting around a table, listening to jazz , ordering another bottle of Chateau Margot, and talking about the meaning of life, and how they venture out into the early morning to walk the Parisi...

VOLUPTUOUS DOCILITY AND SYLLABISM"Xaviere was watching Pierre with a kind of voluptuous docility..." (page 238)"Her fresh lips slowly plucked off each syllable of the word: vol..up..tu..ous." (page 151)Simone de Beauvoir's novel was first published in French in 1943 and in English in 1949. Nabokov's famous syllabic enunciation of "Lo-lee-ta" appeared in the novel "Lolita", which was written in English, and first published in 1955 in Paris, in 1958 in New York City, and in 1959 in London. SHE CAM...

I was trembling with anger during the entire book. The characters are intentionally led to the extreme of their emotions. Simone did this to question love and relationships: how tolerant and honest can you get? Francoise couldn't bare to be honest, but she was extremely tolerant. Did she suffer her "tolerant" humiliation because of love or pride? She wanted to hide this petty human emotion that consumed her and that's why she was silent until the end. She couldn't bare the thought of someone kno...

Love in theory is not the same as love in practice - you can wrap feelings and principles in beautiful intellectual discourses about freedom, acceptance and bonds that transcend social conventions only to have the values you were brought up with rear their ugly heads and bite you in the ass when you are confronted with the reality than the man you love wants to sleep with someone else - and that your philosophical rhetoric gave him permission to do just that, and that you'd be a hypocrite for no...

Otherwise known as 'Never get on the wrong side of Simone de Beauvoir'I first came across Simone de Beauvoir through looking at quotes from her most famous work, The Second Sex, an iconic re-constructionist feminist text. Her ideas really interested me, and so when I found out that she had written novels I was really intrigued. She Came to Stay is particularly interesting as it is based on the real life relationship between de Beauvoir and the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre with whom she had an (v...

I adore Simone de Beauvoir's writing, and this is probably one of her most passionate and accessible books. Based on a real-life love triangle between her, Sartre and one of his young lovers, this takes a cool look at love, and dissects jealousy with scalpel-like precision.Set in smoky, glamorous, pre-war Paris amongst young intellectuals, this probes the distance between the theoretical politics of sexual relationships and the lived reality - in theory love is liberated from bourgeois jealousy

This is billed as the book SDB wrote when one of Sartre's lovers (Olga Kosakievics) entered their lives and threatened to disrupt the famous partnership about which so much has been speculated. This description doesn't do the book justice.It does, nevertheless, need to be admitted from the start that Beauvoir is not remembered best for her novels and this one illustrates why: this is no literary classic. It is not a page turner, not a tour de force - at times I had to make myself pick it up to g...

Based on the reviews I had read on Goodreads prior to starting the novel, I thought She Came to Stay would be a long arduous journey between me and Simone that I would't really enjoy, but that ended up not being the case. It was a quick read, mostly dialogue and not at all difficult. I would not suggest this book to someone who wasn't interested in Sartre and de Beauvoir's work already. It is an easy read but dry and without a strong narrative arc. What makes the novel worthwhile is that so many...

Every time I read Simone de Beauvoir afterwards I feel like a completely different person. She Came to Stay is another fantastic novel, and actually through writing this first novel Simone de Beauvoir found her voice and produced an exceptional body of work.

Strong and almost striking at times.Beauvoir makes you love and hate all her main characters in this powerfully written book.

Too big, though, and exhausting at times

Elisabeth stared at the blue horizon where the pinks and greens of the plain finally merged. In the tragic light of history people were stripped of their disquieting mystery. Everything was calm. The whole world was in suspense, and in this period of universal waiting, Elisabeth felt that she was attuned, fearless yet with no desire, to the stillness of the evening.She Came to Stay is one of Simone de Beauvoir’s first published pieces of writing. This novel details the story of a tumultuous thre...

Not sure how to rate this novel. It is the most autobiographical of all de Beauvoir's novels and it reminded me a lot in style and content of her Letters. The combination of drama and introspective musings on existentialism both draw me to her work and frustrate me. I always feel a little disappointed that her life seems so subsumed by her relationship with Sartre. I also can't help wondering what the real people these characters were based on thought about how she portrayed them...

My full review of She Came To Stay is published on Keeping Up With The Penguins.She Came To Stay is set in Paris, around the time of WWII. A young, naive couple – Francoise and Pierre – are very proudly bohemian. They write, they’re in The Theater, and they have an “open” relationship (though it’s “unthinkable that they should ever tire of each other”). All of that is put to the test when Xaviere comes flouncing in. Basically, She Came To Stay is a cautionary tale about the dangers of poorly-pla...

I have always, ALWAYS been obsessed with the love triangle of Jean-Paul Satre, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault since my cherished time in England when I learned a whole cultural theory of philosophy not taught in the American educational system. I then became an avid obssessive student of post-modern dialectic. Although I have read the Second Sex, it is her lovers and relationships with the men in her real life which fascinate me. This novel is supposed to be the story of her obsession and d...

This book went on forever..it could`ve been much shorter. This book is supposed to be based on the author`s relationship with Jean-Paul Satre, and I suppose I just don`t understand how such a prominent feminist could be ok with agreeing to having an open relationship.