The Last Life: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Strongly written and moving
Review: A novel about generations and about expatriates, _The Last Life_ is told from the point of view of Sagesse, the daughter of a French-Algerian father and an American mother. She lives with her parents and grandparents in their family hotel in France and grapples with the crumbling facade of family unity as she herself comes of age. Sagesse is a classic literary teenager-- charming and infuriating and awkward. Her parents can only view her changes from a helpless distance as they themselves are caught within their own crises and betrayals. Messud's writing style is lyrical (if occasionally a little too lyrical for my tastes) and crafts her images with confidence and flair.

Rating:
Summary: Between the past and a dream
Review: Claire Messud is a great storyteller. The story is that of the initiation of a young French teenager to adult life. That would be trite if some extra elements were not mixed to this basic line. First she has a handicaped brother who is condemned to remain in a wheelchair all his life. Second her father has his own story and the end of this story is both poignant and sad, divided as it is between the emigrating boat in Algiers Harbor and the coffin of the refusal of the French defeat. But most of all she is of « pied-noir » origin, her father and her grand parents having been born and bred in Algeria and having lived the war and the independence of this country in blood and loss. This is already something to set her aside from her fellow French teenagers. But her mother is also American by origin and that projects her directly into that split culture, between the lost culture of Algiers under French rule, a culture entirely attached to a disappeared past, and the American culture entirely open, she says, to the future. So we see her playing a part in every situation since she has no past, except a dream, and she has no future, except a dream too she is the only one to be able to make true. You then add to that the dual inspiration from her religion and Saint Augustine's City of God, on one side, and from the revolutionary Camus's City of Man on the other side, and you may think both are equally impossible and that life is nothing but compromises in real present circumstances. And yet it is a lot more than that, and you can only discover it by reading this very fascinating book.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Rating:
Summary: Knockout...I'm still sleeping
Review: Claire Messud's second novel is so far her masterwork: an impressively constructed and written account of a wealthy French Algerian family falling to pieces, and their history of how they got to the point they're at. The breaking of the narrative down into numbered sections is beautifully done, and you find yourself deeply caring for what happens to the narrator, Sagesse (who unfortunately becomes a bit of a pill by the end) and her family members. Her troubled grandfather, snobbish grandmother, exuberant father and (especially) her emotionally wounded mother emerge off the pages as full and breathing characters, and the changes they go through seem extremely natural and believable. The novel is an account of what it means to be an alien in one's own country, and how this particularly becomes inflected by France's traumatic colonial involvement with Algeria. While Messud's prose at times becomes a bit precious, the novel is for the most part masterfully written and quite moving. This is a writer from whom to expect great things in the future.

Rating:
Summary: The Last Life
Review: I found this book to be quite remarkable and very timely. The story moves back and forth between France and Algeria and tells an intricate story of a very complex family. The relationships between the family members and their connection to their heritage is fascinating. The language is superb and many of the descriptions literally raised goose bumps. I only hope there will be more books to enjoy by this young author. Her writing is exceptional and her story provides a valuable insight into what it is NOT to be an American. I loved it and plan to buy it for several friends.

Rating:
Summary: Somehow unsatisfying.
Review: I was led to read this novel by an extract I read in "Granta" magazine. I am glad to say I was not disappointed in my decision to actually read this novel. Reading this novel is quite a tireless experience really, since this is a book you can stop reading at any point and then return to it without in any way losing the atmosphere you were immersed in during your last reading of it. This is made possible both by the quality of the writing as well as the brevity of most chapters. This is not an exciting book in the sense of providing you with an endless series of thrills so as to sustain an illusion of suspense. Instead, you enter the mind and body of an adolescent girl whose life is affected both by the history of her family as well as the developments taking place still within her family. In a sense this is a story of a family related to the reader in an absorbing way by someone who cannot truly be impartial about the story since she too forms a part of the story. Yet somehow she manages to maintain the distance necessary to allow her to tell this story without getting lost within the whirlwind of her own emotions.

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: I won't comment on the writer's perfect prose but rather on how she perfectly managed to write about feelings which are so characteristic to French Algerians.
Their wistfulness, their exuberant but aloof manners, the sentiment that they had not yet completed their journey from Algeria to France and somehow got lost in between - probably into the depths of their beloved Mediterranean sea. This is a story of a shipwreck and its stranded victims, people who were sent away from Algeria and proved incapable to integrate in the new haven provided by their motherland. In this way, this book is a not only a feat of storytelling but a profound description of a collective malaise. Anyone who - as an individual or a member of a minority - has experienced estrangement could read and learn from the Sagesse's experience.

Rating:
Summary: Knockout...I'm still sleeping
Review: This is a wonderful book about what happens when the great niece of Albert Camus seduces her MFA professor at Amherst. Full of warm-hearted sketches of peasant life in New York and Boston, Messud takes us on a whirlwind tour of borrowed literary devices. There's not one laugh in the book, either. That would detract from the delicate mood. Messud makes sensuous love to her characters as sweet aromas gently waft across the pages. She is a true artisan of the well-made nothing. This book may not appeal to men or women, but others will rejoice.

Rating:
Summary: A star is born
Review: This is the best novel I have read in 2 or 3 years. It is everything that fiction should be -- beautifully written, engaging, well-plotted and structured. It has several layers of meanings -- historical, family, philosophical and more -- and blends them all skillfully and interestingly. It makes the American grad student/writers' workshop "my parents were mean to me and then my professors were mean to me" trivia look childish and silly by comparison, as they are.

Anyone who says this is an adolescent girl's coming of age story is trivializing it. Ignore them. Read this book if you love literature.

I was particularly impressed with this young author's grasp of the meaning and texture of the lost world of French Algeria in the 1950's and '60's...particularly poignant when read in 1999 from another ruined and abandoned French colony, amid the decaying buildings of Phnom Penh...

I hope the author will write many more books and that her publishers will bring her first novel back into print -- I want to read it. Thank you, Ms. Messud, for writing such a wonderful work.

Rating:
Summary: A delight to read!
Review: What a beautifully written, perfectly executed book! I loved how Messud intertwined each generation's family history into the present history of the teen girl narrator, Sagesse. The sins of the father will visit upon the son, indeed....or in this case, the granddaughter. Messud's command of language is impressive and her prose is so lyrical and magical---perhaps a bit too lyrical for a 15-year old Algerian girl---but that is a minor point. The book itself is perfectly paced and exquisite. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: The most beautiful book I have ever read!
Review: What gorgeous language! What an incredible writer! The Last Life is one of the best written novels I have ever read. This incredible novel contains various elements of fiction: historical, philosophical, and just the right touch of magical realism.

The story is about a French-Algerian family and the constant moving to different parts of the world -- the South of France, the East Coast of the U.S. and Algeria -- has affected each of their lives. It seems as though each family member has found his or her identity in one of the many places they have been. As a result, they never feel like they have found a home. The thing that struck me most when reading this book was how the author described life in the lost world of French Algeria in the 1950's. The historical part of the novel is incredibly accurate. Let me tell you that I have learned a lot of important parts of history in this book. I also love the fact that the story is told through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Lagesse, seen through the eyes of innocence indeed! The Last Life is -- without a stretch of doubt -- the best historical fiction novel I have ever read. This novel should not be overlooked. Run along and get it!