UK reviews:

‘Metamorphosing like Arachne, Bourgeois’s imagined voice recounts how she wove the detritus of her memory (…) into an art of resistance (…) Now, Now, Louison (a reference to her childhood nickname) is a sensitive portrait of a woman whose struggle for self-definition came to drive her artistic practice.’ — Financial Times

‘Riffing off the journals the artist kept throughout her life, Frémon, who knew Bourgeois, gives her story a new outing - sampling her speech, as it were, before streaming it through a surround-sound amplifier - in this perfectly pitched medley of fact and fiction.’ — Times Literary Supplement

‘Short and strange and hypnotic’ — Catherine Lacey, The Guardian

‘This enchanting short book, beautifully translated, playful and tender and angry and witty by turns, is simultaneously a love letter, an elegy, a poem, a novel, a fictionalized biography. Inside the imagination of sculptor Louise Bourgeois, we follow her between memories of childhood, speculations on love and death, and scenes of making her art. Author Jean Frémon, who knew her, brings her intriguingly alive.’ Michèle Roberts, The Tablet

‘His story is both a vivid portrait and an engrossing dialectic with art – its purpose and process, the minutiae of its eternity, the grittiness of its daily practice and existence. Now, Now, Louison is deeply, troublingly private and thrillingly theoretical, (…) It is a compulsive, daringly perceptive, sometimes astringent exploration of the role, power and symbolism of maternity, fertility, sublimation and reality, ecstasy and happiness, silence and the overcrowding bustle of belonging; of hysteria and emotionality, of how to give material substance to presence, to nothingness and the void. (…) Reading Now, Now, Louison is not a straightforward literary exercise – unless one is willing to listen rather than pull the strings of both narrative and life into neat patterns, perfect phrases or frames of polaroid images. It feels, in fact, like a casual visit, extraordinary and natural at the same time, to Bourgeois’ New York studio/home at 347 W 20th Street. Frémon conveys the chaos and order, the fierce tenderness, the pathology and the rare humanity of Louise Bourgeois, with pathos and even love.’ — Bookanista

‘Jean Frémon brings Louise Bourgeois close up into a fascinating and moving proximity.’ — ArtPress

US reviews:

‘A truly wonderful book… The spider woman, the intellectual, the rebel, the sly enchantress, and the good girl sing together in this exuberant, lithe text beautifully translated by Cole Swensen. There is something uncanny at play in this small book, something I don’t fully grasp, but I suspect that elusive, haunted excess may be exactly why I love it.’ — Siri Hustvedt

‘The best way to read Now, Now, Louison is to surrender to it, to observe in tandem with Louise, to feel alongside her. Individually, the vignettes may not always be decipherable, but collectively they portray a woman of great complexity and imagination. Her life is her art, and vice versa.’ — National Public Radio

French reviews:

‘The life of Louise Bourgeois is rendered in ellipsis, quick brush strokes, and a mix of associations of ideas and of sensations waltzing with chronology. A highly original, sensitive text.’ — Libération

Rest of the World reviews:

‘With impressive versatility, Cole Swensen negotiates the multiplicity of voices, while also maintaining the distinctive spoken quality Frémon achieves in his text. Despite the many tonal shifts, we always know we are rooted in the errant, challenging, deeply compelling inner monologue of Louise Bourgeois. But, arguably Swensen’s greatest accomplishments in Now, Now, Louison stem from her complex engagement with the relationship between fidelity and translation.’ — Asymptote

‘Who sat down beside her, a fictionalised Louise Bourgeois’, Anna Aslanyan, TLS, 18 September 2018

UK reviews:

Top 10 badly behaved biographies, Catherine Lacey, The Guardian, 12 April 2023
Translated Lives: Louise Bourgeois and Annie Ernaux, Becky Varley-Winter, Glasgow Review of Books, 16 April 2019
Book 2 Review The Governesses, Anne Serre & Now, Now, Louison, Jean Frémon Les Fugitives, Georgia DC, Bookblast, 25 March 2019
RofC Podcast for Small Presses Episode 3, Neil Griffiths with Katya Taylor, Jonnie McAloon and Isobel Wohl, 30 November 2018
Now, Now, Louison, Gumble’s Yard’s Reviews, Good Reads, 6 November 2018
‘The genius of too much and too little’, Mike Provata-Carlone, Bookanista, 25 October 2018
Short review, Madeleine Speed, Financial Times, 5 October 2018
‘“Can a man write a feminist book?”: Now, Now, Louison, Jean Frémon’, Helen Vassalo, Translating Women, 25 September 2018
‘Who sat down beside her, a fictionalised Louise Bourgeois’, Anna Aslanyan, Times Literary Supplement, 18 September 2018
‘Women Finding a Voice’, 30 minutes in to the programme Michèle Roberts is on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking, 12 September 2018
‘Something like a portrait of Louise Bourgeois’, Harry Thorne, Frieze online, 3 August 2018
‘The small volume (…) has a curious aura’, Tank Magazine, June 2018

US reviews:

A Writer’s Portrait of Louise Bourgeois, John Yau, Hyperallergic, 6 June 2020
’Now, Now, Louison’ Review: Dance of the Spider Woman, Jackson Arn, Wall Street Journal, 3 May 2019
Now, Now, Louison Attempts to bring art, and its artist, to life, Martha Anne Toll, National Public Radio, 28 March 2019

Other reviews:

‘Brigette Manion reviews Now, Now, Louison by Jean Frémon’, Brigette Manion, Asymptote, October 2018
Now, Now, Louison, Thomas Koed, Volume Books, December 2018