Panics

Starred review from June 13, 2022
Molinard’s startling and surreal collection, first published in France in 1969, presents the pitfalls of mental illness in a world made foreign. Prolific yet terrorized by self-doubt, Molinard (1921–1986) destroyed everything she ever wrote, save for the stories preserved by her husband as well as her friend Marguerite Duras, who contributed an introduction. The opener, “The Plane from Santa Rosa,” sets the tone with a woman traveling around a city killing time before a flight, window shopping and making chit-chat with clerks. In “Come,” an unnamed narrator sits in a train station and struggles to write a travelogue that might be entirely imagined. A section titled “Untitled” consists of various fragments. “Taxi” echoes many of the recurring themes Molinard uses to explore displacement, depression, and despair; in it, a man who doesn’t remember getting in a taxi observes the world as it rolls past his window. The collection ends with “The Vault,” in which Duras and Molinard have a conversation wherein the author explains her desire to live in a windowless darkened vault, away from all of society. Her writing often reads like a diary, churning with a force driven by illusory sadness. Ramadan’s translation is a great gift to readers.