Olivier Pont

Fragments of Femininity

Jeff James

Full disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from Net Galley.

This collection of short stories about women and their breasts wants to have it both ways. It aspires to be both a very French, very male appreciation of topless women in all their variations and a thoughtful exploration of the feminine soul.

Doing that combination well would be a tall order for just about any writer, and this book isn’t really up to the task. Instead, it’s too self-serious to be smutty and too shallow to be insightful.

The art is pretty decent, though. I would probably be willing to read another book drawn by Pont, but his writing just isn’t up to to the task.

These stories are uniformly slight and wan, and the overall impression is almost entirely superficial. Which is, perhaps, unsurprising for a book of stories about women’s breasts written by a man.

Fragments of Femininity

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