A review by tasmanian_bibliophile
The Last Life by Claire Messud
4.0
‘When I was a little girl, I had believed that if you looked long enough and hard enough into a picture you might enter into it..’
Ms Messud’s second novel tells the story of Sagesse LaBasse and her family. Geographically, the novel moves between Algeria, France and the USA. Sagesse’s mother is American, her father and his parents are repatriated French Algerians. Each family member is haunted by different aspects of the past, each reacts differently to the reality of the present. Sagesse’s grandfather has established the Bellevue Hotel in the south of France overlooking the Mediterranean. Here, Sagesse, her parents Alexandre and Carol, her brother Etienne and her grandparents Jacques and Monique live.
The story opens with Sagesse, now resident in the USA, looking back at the events of the year her family disintegrated and the reasons why. There is more than one story in this novel, and perceptions and interpretations vary according to perspective. Overwhelmingly, for me, this was a story of loss and regret and yet there is the possibility, for Sagesse at least, of a more promising future.
Whether you enjoy this novel will depend very much on which threads of narrative you choose to primarily follow. Not all displacement and dispossession is geographic but it is all unsettling.
‘I am American now: it is a life which has, like that of many others, like my father’s or my grandfather’s, the appearance of choice. And in time, America becomes a home of a kind, without the crippling, warming embrace of history.’
The hold of the past, the draw of the future, the currency of the present: these are ties for each of us.
Ms Messud’s second novel tells the story of Sagesse LaBasse and her family. Geographically, the novel moves between Algeria, France and the USA. Sagesse’s mother is American, her father and his parents are repatriated French Algerians. Each family member is haunted by different aspects of the past, each reacts differently to the reality of the present. Sagesse’s grandfather has established the Bellevue Hotel in the south of France overlooking the Mediterranean. Here, Sagesse, her parents Alexandre and Carol, her brother Etienne and her grandparents Jacques and Monique live.
The story opens with Sagesse, now resident in the USA, looking back at the events of the year her family disintegrated and the reasons why. There is more than one story in this novel, and perceptions and interpretations vary according to perspective. Overwhelmingly, for me, this was a story of loss and regret and yet there is the possibility, for Sagesse at least, of a more promising future.
Whether you enjoy this novel will depend very much on which threads of narrative you choose to primarily follow. Not all displacement and dispossession is geographic but it is all unsettling.
‘I am American now: it is a life which has, like that of many others, like my father’s or my grandfather’s, the appearance of choice. And in time, America becomes a home of a kind, without the crippling, warming embrace of history.’
The hold of the past, the draw of the future, the currency of the present: these are ties for each of us.