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Scaffolding

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Scaffolding

By: Lauren Elkin
Narrated by: Lauren Elkin
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Brought to you by Penguin.

The story of two couples who live in the same apartment in north-east Paris almost fifty years apart.

In 2019, Anna, a psychoanalyst, is processing a recent miscarriage. Her husband, David, takes a job in London so she spends days obsessing over renovating the kitchen while befriending a younger woman called Clémentine who has moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective called les colleuses.

Meanwhile, in 1972, Florence and Henry are redoing their kitchen. Florence is finishing her degree in psychology while hoping to get pregnant. But Henry isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood…

Both sets of couples face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy, against a backdrop of political disappointment and intellectual controversy. The characters and their ghosts bump into and weave around each other, not knowing that they once all inhabited the same space.

A novel in the key of Éric Rohmer, Scaffolding is about the bonds we create with people, and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways that people we’ve known live on in us; and about the way that the homes we make hold communal memories of the people who’ve lived in them and the stories that have been told there.

© Lauren Elkin 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024

 Family Life Friendship Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Marriage Pregnancy
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Critic reviews

Scaffolding is like a perfect French movie of a novel…but it is elevated by the writer’s elegant, original and often very funny prose
Intelligent, sexy and brilliantly observed
[Scaffolding is] atmospheric and evocative, the prose elegant and poised
Scaffolding is an ambitious, multi-generational book that reckons with legacy and feminist resistance…truly fascinating… a provocative study
'Lauren Elkin is a writer than can jump between genres so seamlessly, she deserves to be a household name...Elkin continues to dazzle with her keen observations and reflective prose'
'An unabashedly philosophical novel — one that keeps the reader hooked by the sensuality of its prose'
Elkin’s first novel is a brainy sex comedy… Scaffolding joins books by Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy, and as an erudite lust quadrilateral interested in ethical quandaries… There’s no shortage of excitement in the twists supplied by what each character doesn’t know (or chooses to hide or ignore) about one another
A compelling work of fiction… the book will linger long in the reader’s heart and mind
[Scaffolding] unspools layers of psychic history to ask questions about the nature of desire and the possibility, or not, of intimacy… Anna’s first-person vice…is immersive. The conversations she reports feel authentic, with mundanities jostling up against profundities
Scaffolding shows off Elkin’s rich, scholarly mind to great effect… a book laden with lust and desire… I expect to see Elkin’s debut feature on many end-of-year lists, and deservedly so
All stars
Most relevant
Loved both the narrative and the narration. Intriguing use of place, with events based largely in a single apartment. Thought provoking ideas, cleverly placed in a compelling story of relationships.

Compelling, thought provoking and intelligent

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Rich story of human relationships across time. As a guy, found the insights interesting.
Enjoyed the narrator’s voice, but found the character (first person) switches difficult to follow initially as delivered in the same tonal range. Became easier as I got accustomed to it.
Thanks

Fresh and thought provoking

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Deep book that makes you think about your own life story. I really enjoyed the delve into psychoanalysis and revisiting Lacan after many years. There are quotes from this book that will stay with me, especially in relation to adultery. Interesting and dark at times. A good book for arties too. I’ll listen again.

Makes you think

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I read Lauren Elkin's 'Art Monsters' and loved its honest, deep and fragmented narrative; I boarded the journey through a world of powerful women and was left bursting with ideas. I thought the author tested beautifully the structural boundaries of non-fiction, and smiled when I saw her novel's title, 'Scaffolding'. I was up for some more structural play.

The novel's ideas and characters are interesting, and I definitely enjoyed the parallel between building works, the psyche, and people in different timelines occupying the same space, as if exploring patterns with the same motifs. I feel, however, that the ideas that structure the book, especially the psychological discussions, take over the narrative and have a life stronger than the one of the story itself. It is as if the book had been conceived around ideas, rather than characters.

This feeling is strengthened by the narrative's arch: the main character, Anna, with all her intellectualising, seems to look for ideas that justify her actions or give her a direction - instead of remembering that other (men) wrote all those ideas she's interested in based on their experience; that experience comes first and theory after. She seems to go on a circular journey and go back to where she started, which is hard to believe. Her 'monster-phase', including de-constructing monogamy, her own ideas about herself and the search for her own 'life force' - were definitely the most interesting part to me, even if they came to a bland conclusion.

Regarding the second narrative line, Henry and Florence - I was left with so many questions!! I make a point of reminding myself that mystery's inherent to storytelling, and go about my day imagining what happened next.

Interesting thoughts, perhaps not fully incorporated

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Compelling story, vivid depiction of physial places and feelings, and lots of food for thought. Engaging characters and interesting to read about the philosophy of desire and infidelity. Very relevant themes and musings around patriarchy and female oppression. Slightly disorienting as part two had different characters narrating different sections and they were only separated by the merest pause so you had to figure out who was talking as you went along. The narrator (the author)'s dry, downbeat delivery went well with the story and I enjoyed the French references, though much was untranslated. I deducted a star as the audiobook had a couple of glitches unfortunately - words cut off / skipped sentences.

Unusual philosophical story

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