A bleak, spare and curiously effective novel by a young
Frenchwoman, set mainly in Paris during the Algerian war. Although
this is the story of a timid love affair between Elise, a
twenty-eight-year-old girl from a poverty-stricken province, and
Arezki, a defiant Algerian worker, it is Elise's devotion to her
brother Lucian which highlights the tragic ineptitude of
contemporary youth unable to "dominate . . . fate." Lucien, to
Elise, is the aspiring one, "my only bridge between the world of
others and ours." The dutiful acolyte, Elise is summoned by her
brother to Paris, after he had left his broken-hearted, teenaged
wife and their child in the provinces. Lucien finds his sister a
job in an automobile factory where the hours are long, pay meager,
and the Algerians treated with contempt. While Lucien lacerates
himself in ineffectual protest activity, Elise shyly accepts
Arezki's love. At the close, Lucien, feverishly intent on attending
a "meaningless" demonstration, dies ludicrously on a motor scooter
("he had thought Paris would thunder; Paris had only yawned").
Arezki, arrested, disappears, leaving Elise to question "what was
the power we lacked?" Others must fight the battles, for those
unfit for the power game have only their "fifteen minutes of love"
and hope in the ashes. Terse, taut and relevant. (Kirkus Reviews)
First published in 1985. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
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