The Last Life
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Monday 20 June 2011 |
Introduction
This month’s Dialogue Book Club title takes its readers to the sunny French Mediterranean coast, and into the lives of a three-generation French Algerian family haunted by their history, and brought to the brink of destruction by a single, reckless act.
Our guide through the novel’s unfolding events is 15-year-old Sagesse LaBasse, a young woman with a ruthless regard for the truth. Her family, meanwhile, are overzealous in keeping their secrets, and fiercely guard a life that was left behind in Algeria during the political upheavals of the 1950s.
One incident breaks the cycle of a normal summer, isolating the LaBasse family from the community, and precipitating the disclosure of long-kept family secrets. Questions of truth, love, loyalty and compromise are played out within the family’s hotel grounds. Messud’s novel is mesmerising and complex, and provides great insight into the lives of others.