Thérèse and Isabelle

I'm trying to express as exactly, as minutely as possible the sensations of physical love. There's something here that a woman can understand. I hope this won't appear more scandalous than the thoughts of Molly Bloom at the end of Joyce's Ulysses. Every sincere psychological analysis deserves to be heard, I think. Violette Leduc Charged with metaphors, alternating with precise descriptions of sensations and human relationships, 'Therese and Isabelle' was censored by its publisher in France in 1954, first published in a truncated version in 1966 and not until 2000 in its uncensored edition, as Violette Leduc intended. For the first time in a new English translation, here is the unabridged text of 'Therese and Isabelle'.