This Strange Eventful History
Quotes from the Book
The whole world seemed a maze of shifting mirrors in which I wandered alone, looking always and frenziedly for the exit back into my real life, where people had substance, did as they said they would, and were whole.
I don't want to sleep,' my mother said. 'I want -- for God's sake, I want to wake up.
It is a terrible thing to be free. Nations know this; churches know this. People, however, seek to skirt the knowledge,. They elevate freedom to a holy grail, disregarding the truth that constraints are what define us, in life and in language alike; we yearn to be sentenced.
We don't choose what we believe, or don't believe..and if we do, we'er fooling ourselves. If choice is illusory, the aim must be to keep the illusion intact.
Left, right—the politics don’t matter. It’s chaos, it’s entropy, and anyone with any wit should keep away. But the FN’s not the problem. People who think it is are misguided. It’s just a symptom of the problem. Of the problems. Plural. The problems that this nation faces, overrun with immigrants—Arabs, Africans, the English-speakers, all of them—our culture assailed on all sides. Our children, for God’s sake, building bombs for no reason! And our government—this decrepit, farcical liar who fancies himself emperor—our government has nothing to say about it, nothing at all!
Watch on YouTube
About Claire Messud
More by Claire Messud
This Strange Eventful History
About the book
Claire Messud's piercing second novel asks questions most are too fearful to face. Moving between the South of France, the East Coast of the U.S., and Algeria, The Last Life explores the weight of isolation and exile in one French family. Of course, the adjective French is already inadequate, as at least some of the LaBasses still long for the paradise lost of Algeria. And Alex LaBasse's wife, Carol, try as she might with her Continental impersonations, will always be an American sporting a metaphorical twin set. The narrator, Sagesse, too, soon finds herself equally stranded. Only her autocratic grandfather, Jacques, is ostensibly comfortable with the identity he has wrought: successful owner of the Bellevue Hotel and head of his dynasty. It is thanks to this man that 14-year-old Sagesse comes to crave invisibility. Having lost all of her friends, she sees herself as "a member of the Wi
Book details
- First published
- 1999
- Author
- Claire Messud
- Genre
- Fiction
- Goodreads rating
- 3.55 (2k ratings)
Keep reading
Disoriental
My Friends
Between the World and Me
The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Dust Tracks on a Road
Wide Awake
Shadow of the Hegemon
The Shape of Mercy
The Fall of Babel
V.
The Chrysalids
Infidel
Dream Count
The Golden Notebook
Leaving Before the Rains Come
The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
The Fall
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After
Point Counter Point
A Promised Land
American Pastoral
Mother Night
Resistance, Rebellion and Death: Essays
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
The Man in the High Castle
Demian
Children of Dune
The Wanting Seed
The Story of My Experiments With Truth
The Handmaid's Tale
Open City
Pew
Asymmetry
Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History
One Door Away from Heaven
James
The Yellow Birds
Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration
The Unicorn
Villa Incognito
The Sign
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
How Beautiful We Were
Creation Lake
The Amber Spyglass
The Fire Next Time
My Government Means to Kill Me
We Need New Names
Demons
And the Mountains Echoed
Island
The Magus
No Time To Spare: Thinking About What Matters
Women Talking
Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
A Language Older Than Words
What Is the What
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Against the Day

