The Bedroom by Michelle Perrot review – an intimate history by Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian,
Tue 11 Dec 2018
Details for book
The bedroom, says French superstar historian Michelle Perrot, is the place where everything important has already happened. From the days when early man first rolled a boulder in front of his cave and told neighbours to knock first, to hospital rooms, ladies’ boudoirs, prison cells and Proust’s cork-lined grime box, the bedroom is the place where we are most authentically, and explosively, ourselves. Perrot sets out to locate what she calls the “multiple genealogies” of the bedroom, “the melodic lines where religion and power, health and illness, body and spirit, love and sex interweave”. This sounds so dreamy and yet so thrilling – thanks in part to Lauren Elkin’s exquisite translation – that you can’t wait to push open the door and get cracking on this search for God, love, rest and death.
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