Nathalie Léger interviewed by Amanda DeMarco for BOMB.

Praise for The White Dress

‘This trilogy feels more than a feminist recovery of narrative: it is a method through which the lives of women artists are reimagined and remade through the writer herself, a mode of hospitality in which lives coalesce and transform one another.’ — Katie Da Cunha Lewin, The White Review

‘Léger ponders Bacca’s fate in the context of other female performance artists such as Marina Abramovic and Carolee Schneemann; she considers the hostile, brutal responses to their work, which highlight the threat of violence that shadows women’s lives, especially when they attempt to take ownership of how they appear to others, to men. (...) For Léger, the important thing is that Bacca proceeded with her project, even if she did so hesitantly. In her books, Léger has documented her own difficulty in proceeding, as she comes up against various obstacles in her attempts to find her way into the stories of the women who interest her.’ — Rachel Andrews, The Stinging Fly

‘The White Dress shows Léger doing something new. Her melodious intertwining of another’s story with her own recalls her other works, but this is an altogether darker, altogether more unashamedly melancholic exploration of narrative (…) the narrator of The White Dress is no longer so tentative. For Léger’s message seems to be that to immerse oneself in other people’s stories, whether out of pity or simple escapism, is only to find a projection of one’s own life.’ — The Arts Desk

‘In Léger’s hands, desolation can reveal a woman in all her multiplicity— in her ugliness and abasement and determined self-destruction, seemingly ground down to the nubs of her sorrow, but ultimately emerging with a strange richness, full of haunted persistence, droll knowingness, untamed desires, and hardscrabble resilience.’ — Leslie Jamison, Bookforum

'In each text, Léger’s writing is borne from the women themselves: their lives provide material for new obsessions, and through their work and their working practices, she is led down many paths... Each woman is not a simply a singular life, but a library to be read, a house to explore, a plant to grow.' — The White Review

‘I’ve just re-read Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Léger, translated by Cécile Menon and Natasha Lehrer, as well as the two forthcoming books that form a trilogy with that one: The White Dress, also translated by Lehrer, and Exposition, translated by Amanda Demarco. All three defy categorisation – history, essay, memoir, fiction. I admire the wholeness and agility of these works very much.’ — Catherine Lacey, iNews

‘Léger not only immerses herself in the quest, but in doing so creates a symphony of Pippa’s story and her own life, examining the symbolism of the white dress, and the fate to which the actions of others (usually men) condemn women.’ — Translating Women

‘Léger interweaves the personal and the political to terrific effect.’ — Lucy Popescu, BookBlast

US and Australian reviews:

‘Insisting on looking for what isn’t there is part of Léger’s method. As she searches for truths about her subjects’ lives, she amends the archive’s gaps by introducing short flights of speculation and imagination, allowing her subjects to swell into living figures. Her writing is intellectual, self-aware, and lucid in its demonstration of this investigation-in-progress, a thinking-through dramatized on the page […] This is the brilliance of Léger’s project: we can look and look and see nothing of a person; we can examine them minutely, intently, and miss them completely.’ — New York Review of Books

‘These Léger books are lush, obsessive, and self-reflective (…) Nathalie Léger's transcendent triptych of books about fallen-off-the-path female artists (...) deftly observes how we are all often absorbed into the wave of our own familial and inherited traumas, and how we might resist them.’ — Nathan Scott McNamara, Los Angeles Review of Books

‘Virtuosic’ — Eula Biss, The New Yorker

‘Léger weaves together the story of Bacca’s journey, astute discussions of Marina Abramović and Svetlana Alexievich, and an account of the injustice Léger’s mother endured during her divorce. Léger grapples with her inability to understand the motivations of others, and with the ambiguity of giving voice to the silenced.’ —New Yorker, Briefly Noted

‘Throughout, Léger offers striking observations on how making art distills experience, while references to the polar approaches of Leo Tolstoy and Svetlana Alexeivich—adorned descriptions vs. unalloyed reporting—inform Léger’s own method. Readers should not miss this smart, skillful reckoning with acts of selflessness, betrayal, and grief.’ — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

‘The third book in Leger's uncategorizable triptych turns its lens onto Italian performance artist Pippa Bacca, who was tragically murdered while hiking across Europe in a wedding dress to promote world peace. This harrowing story, told in Leger's agile, exploratory, and gorgeously labyrinthine prose, raises questions about womanhood, justice, and what it means to make art in the world. To be consumed in one sitting and mulled over forever.’ —Halley Parry, bookseller; Skylight Books, Buzzfeed

‘In the opening pages of The White Dress, Leger is justifying her obsessions to her mother (...) There is a specter haunting these pages. You read glimpses of it, hints hiding behind quotes or misdirection.’ — Kyle Williams, Full Stop

“With ferocity and pathos, Léger enters into a standing-with relationship with these other women only to realize she’s been in touch with herself the entire time. This feels to me like the natural movement of the most revelatory art criticism—to move close to the work, to ride along then pierce the work’s textured surface into its mysterious netherworld then looping back out (through innards) towards these words you hear out there in the private distance only to find them coming from your own mouth. With all of these women—Countess of Castiglione, Barbara Loden and Wanda (and Alma H Malone), and Pippa Bacca—Léger comes to know them as women who lived rich lives, artists’ lives, intensely felt.” —Jay Ponteri, Essay Daily

“The suffocating interpolations of being a woman have concealed the words of so many: Pippa Bacca, whose seemingly naive project is now bound to her rape and murder; American actor and director Barbara Loden, whose project of semi-autobiographical film Wanda details the listlessness of life for the 1970s American housewife; The Countess of Castiglione, whose hope had been to exhibit her photos at the upcoming 1900 International Exposition; and Léger’s own mother, whose words ‘too have been hidden away.’ The triptych not only unearths the lost narratives of noted women; but more significantly the writers’ reckoning with her own mother—’I never helped her, I never stood up for her’—suggests that the triptych’s aim is to give voice to one woman: her mother.” —Clancey D’Isa, Chicago Review of Books

‘Léger’s triptych of books about three historical women (an aristocrat central to the development of photography; a filmmaker; and a performance artist) occupies the liminal space between the stylised and the real (…) [F]or Léger the archive and literature are mutually informing. The neutral intellectualism of the former and the subjective affectivity of the latter exist in a dyadic relationship. This tension is a source of the great power of Léger’s extraordinary short books.’ — David McCooey, Sydney Review of Books

French reviews:

‘Nathalie Léger is a melancholy sentinel. From book to book she writes with a hunter’s instinct, questioning the motives of women who, through their oeuvre, transform their lives into a mystery. Each explores alienation and the female condition. In this fascinating account, she holds together the sacred and the profane.’ — ELLE (France)

‘The White Dress inspects the imaginary frontier between art and life.’ — Libération

‘More than just an exploration of a violent news story, The White Dress performs a subtle set of variations on the theme of remnants, of the ghosts that live within us.’ — Le Monde des livres

Further praise for Nathalie Léger and Exposition

‘Tightly controlled and clear-sighted […] ‘a superb study.’ — La Croix

‘In Nathalie Léger’s magnificent text, everything is turned on its head, everything is paradox […] L’Exposition is the fragile and dangerous attempt to reconstitute the self, to seek, in the secret of another woman – in the insane dramatisation of her silence – the very thing that eludes us within ourselves. Thus it is the blanks between the fragments that give Exposition its beauty and its truthfulness.’ — Les Inrockuptibles

‘Nathalie Léger brings Castiglione back to life with grace, style and taste’— Cultures Livres

‘With no plot or linear chronology, the strands still cohere miraculously, held together by the intensity of Léger’s engagement with Oldoïni. Léger’s vigorous work consistently satisfies, with ideas crystallizing with the clarity of a photograph.’ — Publishers Weekly

Further praise for Nathalie Léger and Suite for Barbara Loden

‘Brilliant little book’ — Valeria Luiselli (via Twitter)

‘Inventive and affecting, Suite for Barbara Loden takes both the novel and biography to new and interesting places.’ — Eimear McBride, The Guardian’s Best Books of Year 2016

‘Léger jump-cuts through time and space with the expertise of a movie director’ — Joanna Walsh

‘A little gem’ — Harper’s Magazine

‘Here, now, is a remarkable new book that does everything—biography, criticism, film history, memoir, and even fiction, all at once, all out in front. . . . In her combination of the conversational and the incantatory, the fragmentary and the infinite, Léger captures something of [Marguerite] Duras’s own tones and moods, yet her approach to Loden and her appreciation of Wanda are entirely her own.’ — The New Yorker

‘A moving, subtle novel about the need to create’ — Le Monde

‘Since closing our Winter issue last week, I’ve taken up the rest of the book, and I’ve found it to be one of the most affecting stories I’ve read in a long time. A mix of observation, recitation, and imagination, Suite persists in the idea that no single perspective is sufficient in gaining an understanding of a person, and also, perhaps, that no accumulation of perspectives is sufficient either. — Staff Picks, The Paris Review

UK & Ireland reviews:

Four great independently published books from 2020, Killian Beashel, TN2, 2 November 2020
Guest Review | Lucy Popescu | The White Dress, Nathalie Léger | Les Fugitives, Lucy Popescu, BookBlast Diary, 24 September 2020
Let’s try again. Start over.On Nathalie Léger., Katie Da Cunha Lewin, The White Review, September 2020
The White Dress, Rachel Andrews, The Stinging Fly, 12 August 2020
Catherine Lacey: ‘Who is my hero from outside literature? No one is outside literature!’, iNews, 27 June 2020
Review: Nathalie Léger, Exposition and The White Dress, Translating Women, 11 May 2020
The White Dress by Nathalie Léger – a luminous, rich and moving work, Elodie Rose Barnes, Lucy Writers, 14 April 2020
The White Dress, Paul Fulcher, Good Reads, 29 March 2020
Nathalie Léger: The White Dress review – masterfully introverted, Charlie Stone, the Arts Desk, 22 March
2020

US reviews:

The Fourth Woman, Nicole Rudick, New York Review of Books, 19 August 2021
Nathalie Léger’s Hall of Mirrors, Eula Biss, The New Yorker, 22 April 2021
Briefly Noted Book Reviews, The New Yorker, 7 December 2020
The Humiliation of No Longer Being Desired: Nathalie Léger’s Investigations of Abandonment, Nathan Scott McNamara, Los Angeles Review of Books, 6 December 2020
One thing or a mother, Leslie Jamison, Bookforum, December 2020
4 Books I read recently & loved, Dennis Cooper, Dennis Cooper Blog, 24 September 2020
Women Resurrected in Léger’s Triptych, Clancey D’Isa, Chicago Review of Books, 15 September 2020
Exposition/The White Dress - Nathalie Léger, Kyle Williams, Full Stop, 14 September 2020
Making an Echo: the essay writer as receiver and transmitter in the works of Nathalie Léger, Jay Ponteri, Essay Daily, 14 September 2020
38 Great books to read this fall, recommended by our favourite indie booksellers, Arianna Rebolini, Buzzfeed, 14 September 2020
11 Books You Should Read in September, Nate McNamara, Lit Hub, 9 September 2020
The White Dress, Publishers Weekly, 24 June 2020

Other reviews:

The Irreparable, the Inconsolable, David McCooey, Sydney Review of Books, 14 December 2020
The White Dress by Nathalie Léger, Thomas Koed, Volume Books, 22 June 2020