A masterpiece from France's greatest living novelist. A novel which covers fifty years of French life, from World War II to the present day, set in la France profonde of rural France and the world of the Paris underclass. It follows the life of an albino child abandoned at birth at a convent and her subsequent life as a servant in a grand provincial house, then working as a domestic in a brothel before ending up on the streets of Paris. A novel which engages the mind and touches the heart.
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Abandoned as an infant in a red-stained raspberry crate, the albino baby named Laudes-Marie spends early childhood in a convent as World War II breaks out. But the five-year-old is thrown out at war's end for "stealing" the Baby Jesus she wanted to play with. A kind nun places her among other war orphans and refugees whom old Leontine, her sister, is raising. As several years pass, parents reclaim the children, leaving only strange-looking Laudes-Marie. When Leontine suddenly dies, Laudes-Marie is placed into service with an innkeeping couple. When the woman of the couple slaughters her husband, Laudes-Marie is removed to work as a char in a hotel. Raped and impregnated during a brief holiday, she spontaneously aborts. So go her antipicaresque adventures, which she relays in a straightforward, first-person narrative suffused with authenticity and pathetic, heartbreaking comedy. Christine Donougher translates Germain's French smoothly and compellingly, assuring that this horrific story's resolution in solitude resonates powerfully. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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