(reviewed by JD Jung)
“My sister had always been incapable of choosing. She was also incapable of breaking off the relationship…She was yielding little by little—I see that now, and something in me understood her—to the novel-like element he imported into her life. And natural curiosity also played a part. “
Two sisters have a long history. Both are married; one lives in bustling Paris, and the other, Claire Marie, a physician’s wife, lives in the calm suburb of Ville-d’Avray. When our Parisian narrator would leave her sister’s quiet street after a visit, she felt that she was “coming home from another world”.
However, Claire Marie confides in her that she had an affair with a Hungarian whom she really knew nothing about.
“She threw herself into Marc Hermann’s arms, out of idleness and boredom, because she was hoping for something else, like a bee buzzing against a windowpane.”
This mysterious man claimed he escaped from behind the Iron Curtain and became an “entrepreneur” in France. However, nothing he told her could be verified. In fact, the more she researched and explored, the less she knew.
Events started to get eerie as residents report a strange man lingering around the area. When Claire Marie would walk in the nearby Fausses-Reposes forest, she often felt that she was being followed. Could it be him?
There are a lot of questions left to be answered, but that doesn’t diminish the story.
I could not break away from this mesmerizing novel and read it in one sitting. The author’s haunting prose are full of contrasts that paint the suburbs with ice and darkness as well as picturesque gardens.
This unsettling, small novel is the perfect summer, afternoon read.
