We need to talk about nanny
My ex-husband and I moved from Berkeley, California to Kensington in 1994. I was the proverbial deer in headlights, having not a clue how the world functioned beyond the scope of my somewhat limited life experience. The word naïve doesn’t really cut it, as I was too naïve to notice my own naïvety. In truth,...
Recapturing infinity in the present
“Am I the same person?” asks Fela Rosenbloom, whose narrative of her early life in Łódź, and her internment in no fewer than six German labour and concentration camps, prefaces her husband’s longer, very different account of the 20th century. Miracles Do Happen is a joint memoir of war, Jewish life, community and identity, survival...
When time disappeared
A resolute, yet equable slim volume, full of old-world poise, brimming with humanity, added itself in September 1945 to the list of J.-H. Jeheber Librairie et Éditions in Geneva. The title of Françoise Frenkel’s No Place to Lay One’s Head would appear to be affably in tune with its publisher’s ethos and history: the allusion...
To watch over them
The baby is dead. It took only a few seconds. The doctor said he didn’t suffer. The broken body, surrounded by toys, was put inside a grey bag, which they zipped shut. The little girl was still alive when the ambulance arrived. She’d fought like a wild animal. They found signs of a struggle, bits...
Magritte: This is not a biography
Intoxicated by the prospect of a promotion, Charles Singulier allows himself a small extravagance: he buys a bowler hat. But unbeknownst to him, this particular hat was once the property of the great Surrealist René Magritte – and by donning it, he is transported into the artist’s off-kilter world. What’s more, he can’t escape –...
It is us they burn
In the course of the 2005 youth riots that broke out across France, thirty-two libraries were burnt down or so badly ravaged that their contents had to be thrown away. If one looks at the period covering 1996 to 2013 the tally rises to more than seventy. Libraries come under attack in the banlieues again...
Doctor’s orders
A few days ago, I was fished out of the Seine just in the nick of time. Two feet from the bank, to be precise, but that’s more than far enough to sink into the mud and float to the surface a couple of weeks later, limp and soggy as the hunks of bread people...
The dream of a ridiculous man
This is a dark firecracker of a book – a deceptively slim volume dominated by a single, long-drawn voice that holds tremendous evocative powers and contains almost overwhelming quantities of undiluted pain but also startling wisdom. The storyline is almost risible – and the main character is convinced that the murkiest ridicule is his quintessential...
The opposite of Birmingham
Paris is a collective masterpiece, perhaps the greatest in the world. Yet it is not a place for individual wonders, and many visitors may feel the kind of disappointment that I did on my first visit: of the world-famous attractions only the Eiffel Tower, the Opéra and the Louvre colonnade really live up to their...
I, Octavio
The day I finished my degree in modern literature at the Sorbonne in May 2010, I was called before a board of examiners to present my dissertation on the ‘engaged literature’ of the interwar period. After I had spoken for three hours, I was awarded my MA. I went off to celebrate with friends from...
All true stories are fiction
A few weeks ago, when I was in London to present my book about Moscow, I was asked – like many a debut author – how much of the story was based on my own experience. This was just after my first public reading, I was still shaken, and I blurted out a clumsy response...
Not for the ordinary reader
Émile Zola thoroughly enjoyed being the bête noire of French letters and the gadfly of the literary imagination, constantly challenging what writing, novel writing in particular, was all about. He was unflinching in his project of redefining literature as an enterprise of scientific scrutiny into society’s innards and gutters. He became the leading figure of...
