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The Last Life: A Novel
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780156011655
ISBN: 0156011654
Label: Harvest Books
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: September 28, 2000
Publisher: Harvest Books
Studio: Harvest Books
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Editorial Review:
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 of all of her friends, she sees herself as "a member of the Witness Protection Program, surrounded by an odd human assortment chosen only for the efficiency of disguise; but somehow, nevertheless, inescapable."
The cause of this loss? Jacques, fed up with Sagesse and her pals' late-night noise at the hotel pool--or perhaps with their failure to take him seriously--shoots at one girl. This incident ruptures life for each LaBasse, the Bellevue no longer "their bulwark against absurdity." Looking back on the crucial two years following the patriarch's "target practice," Sagesse possesses both a teenager's slant self-interest and an older, acute eye for the mechanisms of shame. The Last Life is that rare thing, a fast-moving philosophical novel masquerading as a bildungsroman. In her efforts at identity and affection, its heroine is increasingly alive to the subterfuges of narrative, forcing herself to sort through versions of reality. Her grandmother, for instance, relates one myth about her husband, only to have Carol undercut it entirely. And Sagesse herself can't figure out whether Jacques is "sentimental or heartless." What if both, she realizes, are possible?
As Messud's narrator navigates her way through the past--and the Algerian sections are among the book's most extraordinary--there is everything to savor in her wavelike sentences, many of which possess a dangerously witty undertow. And the scenes of familial tedium are the opposite of tedious. The dialogue snaps with subverted emotion, anxiety, and irony. At one of the LaBasses' bleaker fests, much is made of the mouna, a special (if dry) Algerian cake. Nonetheless, the grandmother does her best to fob it off at evening's end. "I've never cared for it myself, although it's a lovely memory." Retrospect, as Sagesse realizes, is "a light in which we may not see more clearly, but at least have the illusion of doing so."
E.M. Forster called another Mediterranean novel, The Leopard, "one of the great lonely books," and it is into this category that The Last Life instantly falls. --Kerry Fried
Narrated by a fifteen-year-old girl with a ruthless regard for truth, The Last Life is a beautifully told novel of lies and ghosts, love and honor. Set in colonial Algeria, and in the south of France and New England, it is the tale of the LaBasse family, whose quiet integrity is shattered by the shots from a grandfather's rifle. As their world suddenly begins to crumble, long-hidden shame emerges: a son abandoned by the family before he was even born, a mother whose identity is not what she has claimed, a father whose act of defiance brings Hotel Bellevue-the family business-to its knees. Messud skillfully and inexorably describes how the stories we tell ourselves, and the lies to which we cling, can turn on us in a moment. It is a work of stunning power from a writer to watch.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Disappointing
Well written, but the plot is thin, padded in layers of analysis, self-examination, etc. I found myself skimming long parts of it, looking for some substance, for something to actually happen. Key events are telegraphed well in advance, and some of the symbolism is terribly heavy-handed. Sometimes writing well just isn't enough; this one was tedious!
Rating:  - Beautifully Woven
I read Claire Messud's "The Emperor's Children" first, and while I was disappointed with the plot, the writing and the characters leapt out at me. This was the frame of mind that I began with when I opened "The Last Life."
The story is simple and not simple; it is the story of one family told through the eyes of one daughter, and is made wondrously complex by the layers of myth and story related second and third hand. The narrator, Sagesse, deals with the struggle of her father and ... Read More
Rating: - Enjoyable
I read this book after reading the hunter. I didn't think it was as good, but didn't regret reading it either. Claire is very detail oriented which gets a little tiring. Is it a case of the author getting lost in the details or a case of an impatient reader remains to be judged. I liked it and I am glad that I read it but it is not going to make my favorite list.
Rating: - As if...
The novel extraordinarily manages to incorporate two things that are not easy for the finest, most accomplished writers to pull off: stylistically virtuosic prose par excellence, as well as a heart-rending story without descent into bathos. It is not my wont to endow many books or novels of any sort with such high laud. But this book fully deserves it. It is at once a coming-of-age story, a deep meditation on identity, a dive into history, and a plot riven with a deep sense of loss; all tendered to ... Read More
Rating: - Varieties of Exile
This beautifully-written novel opens and closes in America, where Sagesse LaBasse, its narrator, resides as an exile in her mother's homeland. She shapes a memoir that is thoughtful beyond her years, mingling the everyday events of her own French childhood with the history of her father's family. They too are exiles. Ousted from their home in Algeria by the revolution of 1962, the LaBasses have settled as hoteliers on the Côte d'Azur, only to find themselves treated as outsiders even in France. Of course, ... Read More
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