“This strange, eventful story” by Claire Messud

This is a review. The author is responsible for the opinions in the text.

“This strange eventful story”. It’s an apt title for the partly autobiographical family chronicle by the American Claire Messud, now in a beautiful Swedish translation by Eva Johansson. Born in 1966, Messud is the kind of novelist who is often nominated for the Booker Prize and also achieves success with readers. And there is a lot that drives and enriches this novel text: For almost a century, different people from the colorful Cassar family take turns having their say. It is a successful approach that nuances the portraits of everyone involved and creates a restrained dynamic.

The structure of the novel consists of seven parts, focusing on each year, from 1940 to 2010, but the epilogue and prologue are written by the author: “I’m a writer, I tell stories. Actually, of course I want to save lives. Or simply: I want to save lives“. By following the patriarch Gaston Cassar, his son François, the daughter Denise, the daughter-in-law Barbara and the granddaughter Chloe, it is described how similar we are, regardless of time and place – but at the same time the curse of place and time also rumbles. We cannot step out of our time, our destiny. The text is also charged in a wave-like way by a family secret that Messud knows how to use to the utmost, right up to the last Page.

The 8 year old The son – François – begins the story in 1940 in L’Arba, Algeria. Father Gaston sent his family “home”; he himself is a French naval officer in Salonika, today’s Thessaloniki. But beloved wife Lucienne, children François and Denise, along with the rest of the family, are safer in Algeria. Much of the history of the 20th century can be found in the fate of the Cassar family. There is homelessness and homesickness, colonialism and world war. The old world meets the new, sluggish patriarchal structures are shaken by the emancipation of women. Atheism follows faith.

But class, economy and industrial history also shape Cassar’s family. Both father Gaston and son François will work worldwide in large companies, in the oil industry and with aluminum. In order to give his children and grandchildren better opportunities, Gaston gives up his dream of becoming a writer and François gives up an academic career. But granddaughter Chloe is applying to study creative writing at Syracuse University in upstate New York – she’ll be the one to write, write her family’s history and get to manage her grandfather’s unpublished autobiography.

The Catholics Gaston and Lucienne see their marriage and their love as the great miracle of life. After Gaston’s ambivalent and not only heroic war experiences, they live closely together. Working life drove them to Brazil, but after the Algerian revolution they settled as “pieds-noirs” in Toulon on the French Riviera. Inevitably, in a family chronicle, there are some characters who are a little more touching. Gaston and Lucienne’s daughter, Denise, is one of them. Anxious, depressed, and with a few suicide attempts throughout her life, she also becomes both a heavy smoker and an alcoholic, and never really leaves her home. But Messud draws them with great tenderness. The family’s contempt affects herself, and who really has the right to judge whether it is Denise who lives a meaningless life?

The son François has an ambivalent relationship with France and Algeria and, after unsuccessful studies at an elite school in Paris, turns to the USA, where he receives a prestigious Fulbright scholarship to Harvard. English becomes his language and he also meets Barbara from Canada. But time has run away from the idea of ​​​​marriage as a sacred foundation, the unconditional love of parents for each other will not characterize the marriage of François and Barbara. The differences that drive their passion also lead to deep divisions and conflicts. This is also presented without cynicism: more with a matter-of-fact look at how difficult it is to be in close relationships. Messud writes complexly about all phases of life, even about death. Through various lived experiences, the novel weaves together a piece of our history. It is skillfully and movingly done.

Read more Texts by Kristina Sandberg and other reviews of current books in DN Kultur.