Good Mother, Bad Mother. The Depiction of Mother Figures in Agnès Desarthe’s "Un secret sans importance and Mangez-moi"

Agnès Desarthe, winner of the prestigious "prix du Livre Inter" and writer of adult and children’s fiction alike, examines a variety of themes in her works, including one of the most perennial in writing by women: motherhood. Francesca Counihan discusses the fact that more and more French women authors have “come to prominence [including] more discreet presences such as Agnès Desarthe.” When her second novel Un secret sans importance was published in 1996, Desarthe was indeed “une quasi-inconnue” but with several more novels published in the intervening years, a good number of which were translated into English, Desarthe’s works were more frequently disseminated and discussed by the time her seventh novel, Mangez-moi, was published in 2006.