Andrew's Reviews > The Mandarins

This was my first time reading Beauvoir's fiction, and I'm rather ashamed I'd waited this long. Having proven herself in The Second Sex and The Ethics of Ambiguity to be one of the smartest, nimblest thinkers of the 20th Century as well as one who made her ideas perfectly clear all of the time, without any of the usual French obfuscation, it's only natural that her fiction should follow suit. And what I loved about The Mandarins was its take-no-prisoners approach. Not a single character was above mockery and derision, and yet another prisoner that was not taken was cynicism itself, as each of those character is also worthy of love, affection, and respect, even at their most fucked up. Similarly, their salon conversations, as silly as they are at times, are often scintillating.