MixedThe Washington Independent Review of Books...a thoughtful, occasionally confounding, hybrid of a book. Part memoir, reportage, biography and philosophical treatise, it shuns the easy answers of a heroic account, instead laying bare the mundane and searing details of tragedy ... Carrère’s account is strongest in his descriptions of Juliette’s family. The loss of a child is shocking under any circumstances, but there is something about the unadorned nature of Carrère’s prose that is singularly profound, as is his frank assessment of his own circumstances ... Carrèe believes that some people have been so \'damaged at their core almost from the beginning\' that they cannot live. As a reader, it is difficult not to interpret this as a form of victim-blaming.
