Alice, the Sausage (2003, tr. Catherine Petit and Paul Buck, 2006) was the debut novel of French writer Sophie Jabés and published in English by Dedalus Books as part of their Euro Shorts series. The idea of the series was that you could enjoy the book on the short trip between London and Paris via Eurostar. But for such a short work it packs much to digest.

From its biblical opening (‘In the beginning were Alice’s legs.’) we view the titular Alice as perfect. Those legs (‘Slim. Streamlined. First class. Aristocratic.’) are just part of a body so beautifully designed it gives all the men in Rome a hard-on. But touching is forbidden as Alice is reserving herself for her one and only, whenever he should appear.

But a meeting with her lothario father crushes her esteem when he tells her that she’s no Marilyn Monroe and that if you can’t be beautiful for men then you should open your legs and be nice for them. Her mother, equally unhelpful, confides that as long as she doesn’t starve and depilates she’ll have a good life.

In an innocent interpretation of such parental advice, so begins Alice’s sad, comical, and grotesque descent as she develops an appetite for food and fellatio, working in as prolific a manner as Garcia Marquez’s Eréndira. 

There’s a hint of Kafka in Alice’s transformation, an inverse of the butterfly’s lifecycle as beauty turns into, well, a sausage. But for all its decadence and disgust, there’s delicious food on offer (and a glossary of Italian delights at the back) and the story of a woman on a path to self-destruction, whether it be her own choice or that of forces outside her control.