Madame Rose
Paris, Albin Michel, (April) 1998.
1 vol. (150 x 245 mm) of 299 p. and [2] f. In wrappers, uncut.
First edition.
One of 60 copies on white vergé paper, the only paper (no. 35).
Signed presentation inscription: “pour Monsieur Arthur Marchet, ce roman d'une mémoire qui fut celle du siècle, en très cordial hommage, Michel Déon. Sept. 99.”
One of 60 copies on white vergé paper, the only paper (no. 35).
Signed presentation inscription: “pour Monsieur Arthur Marchet, ce roman d'une mémoire qui fut celle du siècle, en très cordial hommage, Michel Déon. Sept. 99.”
In her gilded retirement on the rue Guynemer — a 300 m² apartment facing the Jardin du Luxembourg — Madame Rose, an ageless, half-paralyzed old lady, finds in a distant young cousin of twenty-three, Gaston, a patient and sometimes insolent interlocutor: a minister’s son and part-time draughtsman. In the afternoons, at Madame Rose’s side, he learns everything the university had neglected to teach him: that frivolity is an art and love a game of hide-and-seek. A delicately immoral novel, a sentimental education in which Déon, that subtle mind, once again slips in, like a bookmark, a call to freedom.
A fine copy, with a distinguished provenance from a learned and much-missed bibliophile.
#29932
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