Author(s): Virginie Despentes

FICTION

Claudine has always been pretty and Pauline has always been ugly. But when Claudine wants to become famous, she enlists gloomy Pauline - with her angelic voice - into pretending they're the same person. Yet just as things take off, Claudine commits suicide. Pauline hatches a new scheme, pulling on her dead sister's identity, inhabiting her apartment, and reading her mail. As the impersonation continues, Pauline slowly realises that the cost of femininity is to dazzle on the outside while rotting away on the inside - and that womanhood is what ultimately killed her sister.