Simone de Beauvoir’s lost autobiographical novella The Inseparables
by Deborah Levy
Deborah Levy discusses the little-known adolescent relationship Simone de Beauvoir had with her childhood friend Élisabeth Lacoin in a recent article in the Guardian.
“In every decade of my life since my 20s, I have been awed, confused, intrigued and inspired by Simone de Beauvoir’s attempt to live with meaning, pleasure and purpose. “Be loved, be admired, be necessary; be somebody,” she insisted in her autobiography, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter.
The act of her writing what has now been titled The Inseparables cannot be extricated from this endeavour. It is a valuable part of the long conversation that De Beauvoir’s books have begun.”