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Sand, George. Valvèdre. Trans. and intro. Françoise Massardier-Kenney. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007. xvii + 203 pp. $65.50 (hardback); $21.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–7914–7059–6/7060–2, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 44, Issue 1, January 2008, Page 98, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqm154
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Françoise Massardier-Kenney's translation of Valvèdre (1861) makes an important late text by Sand available to an English-speaking audience for the first time. In this novel, one of the rare works from this period to be narrated in the first person by a male protagonist, Sand uses the adulterous relationship between a younger man and an older woman to highlight issues of narrative voice, conceptions of gender and race, and the question of divorce. A helpful introduction signposts these major features of the novel, and includes notes on the translation process. Massardier-Kenny has chosen in her translation to retain the stylistic distinctiveness and linguistic patterning of the original French text. This has the advantage of enabling close textual analysis and direct comparison with the original, though the privileging of faithfulness over fluency also generates an English text which at times feels excessively literal in its formulations. Nonetheless, this welcome translation finally makes it possible to include Valvèdre alongside other major nineteenth-century French and European novels in comparative literature courses and research projects. One can only hope that the publication of an English translation may hasten the appearance of a modern edition of the original French text.
