Reads like a family memoir ... His books are always filled with digressions, but this one is very nearly overwhelmed by them ... Carrère is maybe the only writer I can imagine who could make an unlikely book like this work.
Emmanuel Carrère is now thought to be France’s 'greatest living writer' ... If someone were to set their sights on becoming the foremost writer in France, it wouldn’t harm their chances if their mother were the head of the Académie française – the body that defines how we are supposed to use the French language – for the last twenty-four years of her life. Happily, Carrère owes his eminence not to nepotism, but to talent.
Affection and wisdom overflow in these pages, which have plenty of drama, as well, in relating a family’s survival in tumultuous times ... An elegant blend of personal, familial, and universal history.
