How to Make a Woman

Name: How to Make a Woman
Price: 34.99 AUD
Availability: PreOrder
ISBN: 9781923058552

Marie Darrieussecq, Penny Hueston

$34.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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French

Text Publishing Company
30 June 2026

Fiction & Literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Fiction in translation

Rose tries to appeal to Solange. ‘You and I are alike,’ she says.

‘We might have been alike when we were little, but the truth is that we’re not at all the same.’

Rose, a psychotherapist, and Solange, an actress, are very different, one diligent and loyal, the other rebellious and self-centred, but they have been best friends forever, despite their contrasting social backgrounds. In How to Make a Woman, we follow the young women’s experiences of adolescence, love, sex, work and motherhood, as they negotiate their place in the world.

This lively portrait of female friendship, of two identities under construction, of ‘what gets done to women’, is also a snapshot of French provincial life in the eighties and nineties. Written with humour and heart, How to Make a Woman is another sparkling novel by one of France’s most renowned contemporary writers.

By: Marie Darrieussecq
Translated by: Penny Hueston
Imprint: Text Publishing Company
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm, Spine: 1mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9781923058552
ISBN 10: 192305855X
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 30 June 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Marie Darrieussecq was born in Bayonne in 1969. Her first novel, Pig Tales, was translated into thirty-five languages. She has published more than twenty books and been awarded numerous prizes. Text has published Tom Is Dead, All the Way, Men, Being Here: The Life of Paula Modersohn-Becker, Our Life in the Forest, The Baby, Crossed Lines, Sleepless and How to Make a Woman. Darrieussecq has written art criticism and journalism, is a translator from English and has practised as a psychoanalyst. She lives in Paris.

Reviews for How to Make a Woman

‘It’s impossible to stop turning these pages…profoundly original.’ * Libération * ‘Darrieussecq’s prose is immediate, lively and unforced, a tour de force.’ * Le Figaro littéraire * ‘Shows us the price women pay to become what is expected of them.’ * Swiss Broadcasting Corporation * ‘At once intelligent, insightful, mischievous and tender.’ * Albertine *