In her trilogy of novellas which takes its overall name from the third story, “La femme rompue”, or “The Woman Destroyed”, Simone de Beauvoir, celebrated feminist writer and longstanding companion and lover of Jean Paul Sartre, portrays three women not dealing well with a crisis in later life. In each case, the crisis is due partly to external factors, including the behaviour of others, but also appears to be partly of their own making.

In l’Âge de discretion (The Age of Discretion), the first story, the sixty-something narrator is increasingly disappointed by her husband’s premature acceptance of ageing and being “past it”, and depressed by the unexpectedly lukewarm reception of her new work. Her complacency is shattered by the discovery that her son Phillipe has rejected the academic profession into which she has steered him, and the left-wing values of his parents, for a career making money. De Beauvoir’s clear, expressive prose with its sharp dialogues explores every facet of the narrator’s changing emotions as the facts are gradually revealed.

She contrives to create some sympathy for the woman, even while exposing the full extent of her failings: she often appears to be an unreliable witness, is jealous of the suspected influence on Philippe of his partner Irène, has sought to control Philippe too much herself, and proves overemotional and extreme in her reactions when she cannot have her way.

The same mixed response applies to Monique in “La Femme Rompue”, although I feel rather more sympathy for her as the growing sense that she has lost connection with her husband triggers his confession that there is indeed “another woman” in his life, but not one that Monique can respect – as if that would really ease her pain. Published in the 1960s, it would seem that de Beauvoir is writing this as a cautionary tale for women who put all their eggs in the basket of sacrificing a career to support a husband and children, running the risk of losing all of these, with nothing to fall back on.

I was least satisfied with the shortest story, “Monologue”, in which a dense stream of consciousness is spouted by an ageing woman who has gone mad in her desire for revenge on those who have wronged her. It is exhausting and tedious (perhaps intentionally!) and somewhat confusing if read in French as a second language. This bleak, disjointed recital seems simplistic in suggesting that the narrator’s sense of her mother’s neglect and preference for her brother when she was growing up can be blamed as the initial cause of a chain of dysfunctional relationships, including with her own daughter. “Monologue” differs from the other novellas, in that it reads like an exercise in creative writing, which lacks authenticity because De Beauvoir is too cool and controlled to identify with her crazed character.