Art and Storytelling

Agnès and Fabienne’s respective attitudes towards writing help to position art as a potential source of intimate, interpersonal connection. Early in the novel, Fabienne tells Agnès that she writes stories so that “other people will know how we live. And they’ll know how it feels to be us” (32). Here, Fabienne identifies storytelling as a profound and powerful method of communication. Stories, in Fabienne’s eyes, allow others to “know how it feels to be us” (32); in this way, stories help to bridge the inherent gap that separates individuals. Through storytelling, Fabienne can communicate her subjective experience, thereby rendering her life meaningful, verifiable, and undeniably real. Although Fabienne’s perspective on the power of stories changes over the course of the novel, Agnès maintains a relatively hopeful attitude towards art. In the final lines of the novel, Agnès states...