I‘m so glad I picked this at Gladstone‘s during Blind Date With A Book - thanks Jess! @jhod
This is an autobiographical novel - the author herself was in and out of prison for sex work and other petty crimes and died aged just 29 in 1967.
It‘s definitely a French novel, with that curious dispassionate, distant, style that is so common but I felt sad for the MC in her emotionless, grubby world and I want to read the author‘s other (2) novels.