[3.5] I can see why this is taught in schools (as another reviewer notes, it's a French A-Level text in England), but am surprised, in a good way, that it was longlisted, back in 2007, for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (precursor to the current format of the Booker International).

Translated, it's a very easy read, basically YA, though for a reader of French around A-Level standard, the slang will take a bit of getting used to. Subject-wise, it technically has that realist 'worthiness' characteristic of the IFFP - it's about an impoverished French-Moroccan teenage girl living on a tough estate on the outskirts of Paris - but it's not in the least dry, so 'worthy' wasn't an adjective that occurred to me until afterwards. This book didn't exist when I was doing A-levels, but Kiffe Kiffe plus an older classic would be a better choice than two of the latter, and certainly gives a less rarefied view of France than the likes of Marcel Pagnol.

It's also potentially educational in that there's a lot to look up about French pop culture of the late 90s and early 00s, the sort of casual references you might get IRL: e.g. saying someone looks like a certain daytime TV presenter. (The book makes sense without knowing all these references, but I enjoy finding out this sort of stuff. If you like to look things up as you go, it means that this otherwise very straightforward book might not be the most convenient read for public transport.)

Narrator Doria's voice may grate for some readers (and the ending is perhaps a bit too neat in that YA way). I have never understood why so many older child and teenage narrators pepper their stories with "I wish [really bad thing] would happen to [so and so]". I don't remember thinking this about more than one or two people (and it's not like I was having a great time socially or at home), and I can't ever remember other kids saying it. In books I've read in adulthood, I've usually thought of it as lazy shorthand for a more inchoate childish and youthful dissatisfaction, but as Faïza Guène wrote this when she was still a teenager herself, and she grew up on an estate like Doria's, where many people have far greater material hardship than most of my old classmates, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt in the way that I wouldn't to a well-meaning middle-class 45 year old trying to write the same character.

Some contemporary readers may feel that a certain plot point needs more exploration and discussion, especially for teen readers: when Doria decides she fancies a boy who, a few weeks / months earlier kissed her without her consent, and whom she had previously found quite repellent - and it's clearly presented as a good thing by the end of the book. It struck me how this wouldn't have seemed anything remarkable in fiction, or a magazine anecdote, 20 or even 10 years ago - although by then a similar reaction to being 'ravished' would have been considered off, and bad writing, by many. One could now consider it as a reaction shaped by Doria's dysfunctional family background - which must have been pretty bad as the family had a social worker (although perhaps France allocates them when things are less bad than UK threshholds) - or a lingering subconscious effect of the patriarchal culture she is in many other ways managing to shake off. It's also an example of a popular trope of the 90s and 00s, the nerd gets the girl. But to make it just about the character neglects changing general norms - which have possibly changed more among the young and among Anglo-American liberals than elsewhere. And I find it very interesting as an example of inner emotions changing rapidly - seeing in action the stuff covered by the scholarly field of the history of emotions I referred to the other day in reviewing Lucy Worsley's Jane Austen at Home. It was sad to see how often Doria referred to commercial women's magazines as ways she and others learned about life and relationships (and to shape their views of what was and was not appropriate to feel and do) but also sadly accurate for pre-www girls who had negligible useful support from people they knew. I was kind of glad magazines have waned, but on the consumerism and fashion front, they seemed quite benign compared with what you hear about Instagram and teens now.

I found Kiffe Kiffe really interesting. Contemporary fiction about immigrants, and about poorer people (who aren't struggling creatives) in other European countries is something I've long wanted to read more of, but not much is translated. (And when it is, it's rarely as approachable as this.)

The title of this book, Kiffe kiffe demain, must give translators nightmares. The problem is that it’s a play on words, and not just on any normal words, but ghetto slang. “Kif kif” is vernacular roughly meaning “same ‘ole, same ‘ole”; “kiffer” is vernacular meaning “to like/love”. The title has a bittersweet tang derived from the opposing feelings of despair (“same ‘ole shit tomorrow”) and hope (“loving tomorrow”). That title must also give those tight-arsed asshats at the French Academy nightmares. “But zis is ghetto Frrench! Quelle horreur!”

The book is set in the banlieues, which a dictionary will misleadingly translate as “suburbs”. This is not, however, Desperate Housewives territory: middle-class angst is more the preserve of the ill-de-la-cité. The banlieues are the French version of community housing with all the attendant connotations that entails. Its American equivalent is Harlem or the ghetto, and yes, the ambivalence (or just downright racism) of the French to these members of the population is their equivalent of the white-black divide in America. So much for liberté, égalité, et fraternité eh?

Call the book a French mash-up, if you will, of Catcher in the Rye and The Invisible Man. It’s got that perfectly realised adolescent tone of scorn and angst, and the well-aimed barbs at the system of racism. It’s not a one-sided polemic, however. Doria, the heroine, is as critical of her fellow residents with their sexism and narrow-mindedness as she is of French racism. It’s also more hopeful than that pairing of American classics would suggest. As much as Guène punctures French racism, she also acknowledges how the French social safety net can be helpful: for example, Doria’s mother is able to get a better job through free literacy classes provided by the state.

The comparison with Catcher in the Rye and The Invisible Man is as much to suggest that this work deserves to become a French classic. Not because it’s “Lit-ruh-chuh”, but almost precisely because it’s not. It’s a blast of fresh air through the self-satisfied, whiney navel-gazing going on in a lot of celebrated current French novels. For all the adolescent POV, the novel is refreshingly unself-centered. And in daring to put forth for the very first time in French literature a poor marginalised heroine like Doria front and centre of a literary work as a person wholly deserving of an equal place in the country of the bleu-blanc-rouge, Guène follows in the footsteps of Victor Hugo and Collette. And like her predecessors, she deserves as much to be called French as they are.

Check out the Guardian interview with Faïza Guène, and recent reportage by Al Jazeera on the problem of discrimination in France.

* Best line in the book for me: "En France, trois mots en "iste", ça suffit pour qu'on donne ton nom à un lycée, une rue, une bibliothèque ou une station de métro." (In France, [if you can be described with] three words with the suffix "ist" (e.g., journalist, socialist, unionist), that's all it takes for your name to be given to a school, a road, a library, or a subway station.)

i read this book in a french class in high school, and my fondest (and only) memory of it is that we convinced our friend who wasn't taking french that this was called "Chief Keef Demain," and was a memoir of Chief Keef's time married to his first wife, a french woman (pictured on the cover).

this was four years ago and i am still laughing just thinking of it.

(this is part of a project i pick up every year or so where i review books i read a million years ago because i am stubborn.)

Tres magnifique! What a surprise!

I am headoverheels in love with this novel! Unputdownable, it is extremely hard to find fault with this wondrous tale by a 19 year-old writer. It will make you laugh like no other book in recent memory. No wonder the French went gaga over this new Sagan, this new Salinger. Her novel is worth finding, reading & sharing. I wanna thank an old friend whose favorite book was the French version of this unique novel. Definitely my favorite read of the year thus far!

n  “‘Why would he give a shit about voting?’ The guy already has to fight daily just to survive, so you can forget about his duties as a citizen .. If his situation improved a little, maybe he would want to get out and vote.

I wonder if this is why these housing developments are left to decay, because few people around here vote. You have no political usefulness if you don’t vote.”
n

Our narrator, the very acerbic Doria, is surrounded by culturally ignorant people in her daily life while at home she lives among her “own people” you could say. Doria and her mother are living in France after immigrating from Morocco along with her awful, sexist father. He eventually moved back to have another family and finally has his own son just as he’s always dreamt. Good riddance I say, they are better off without him anyway.

n  “Dad, he wanted a son. For his pride, his reputation, his family honor, and I’m sure lots of other stupid reasons.”n

See?

What a terrible waste of a ‘sperm donor’.

n  “Our generation’s lucky because you get to choose who you’re going to love for the rest of your life. Or the rest of the year. Depends on the couple.”n

Doria, she gravitates toward thinking of her life in terms of movies, those thoughts are quite funny.

n  “It’s like a film script and we’re the actors. Trouble is, our scriptwriter’s got no talent. And he’s never heard of happily ever after.”n

She’s moody at times like all teenagers are but she loves her mom and wants to better their lives and she got spunk to go with it - I’m sure both these women will do just fine on their own.

n  “Later when my breasts are bigger and I’m a little bit more intelligent, like when I’m adult, I’ll join up with a group that helps people...

Knowing there are people who need you and you can be useful to them, it’s really cool.

One of these days, if I don’t need my blood or one of my kidneys, I could donate them to the sick people who’ve had their names on the lists for forever. But still, I wouldn’t do it for a clear conscience or so I could look at myself in the mirror when I’m taking off my makeup after work, but because I really wanted to do it.”n

I wish to counteract the negativity of my financial patronage of this book through my purchase of it with this review. This book markets itself as a book designed to relate to high schoolers and be that their reading level but is in fact a thinly veiled attempt at political propaganda, which makes its target age group a moral concern. This story’s exaggeration of racism coupled with it’s negative stereotypes not only increase reverse racist sentiment in the mentally feeble reader but it’s clearly designed to increase support for the political left through the power of false victimisation. I am in no means suggesting that the racism prorated in this book doesn’t exist but it’s certainly not common or accepted in western societies like this book makes it out to. I am unreserved in my opinion that this by far the worst book I’ve ever read and I am deeply concerned that a kid might either through their own volition or through the school program be made to read it and propagandised towards a violent ideology of thinly vailed hate and racism under the guise of love and anti racism.

I was going to write a review about this book, but then I remembered that I don't remember anything about it. I read it last month and it has already slipped from my mind.

I love coming of age novels, but this protagonist is barely memorable.

J'ai tout simplement adoré ce roman !

Doria, l'héroïne, est spontanée, ironique, drôle (souvent sans le vouloir), fine observatrice donc perspicace, blagueuse... Elle n'épargne personne de son entourage dans ce roman qui est une sorte de long soliloque sur sa vie.

On parle souvent des "banlieues" sans jamais les connaître, tout en y attribuant toute une série de clichés (qui ont encore la vie dure aujourd'hui). De tels livres sont pour moi nécessaires pour mieux comprendre cette socialisation si particulière à la France.

Encore plus intéressant que d'avoir, pour une fois, le point de vue située d'un personnage féminin (au contraire des classiques du genre comme le film La Haine, par exemple). J'aime beaucoup cette nouvelle veine de créations et de créatrices qui permettent de mettre en lumière d'autres points de vue qui sont sous-représentés - peut-être, et surtout, invisibilisés. Je pense par exemple au cinéma à Bande de Filles ou à Divines (que j'ai vu et que je recommande chaudement).

Bref, un roman qui se lit d'une traite. Le témoignage d'une adolescente pas épargnée par la vie mais qui garde une énergie inébranlable.

A story about growth and self discovery!!!

Finished reading this book Friday morning on my metro ride in to work. This was a great book for the metro since you could pick it up and put it down without losing any train of thought or end during a critical piece of analysis. Not a great book at all. It was cool, since the perspective was intriguing: French-born Moroccan adolescent girl growing up in poor suburbs around Paris with her Moroccan mother and absent father.

The timing of this book was good, given the riots last year in the suburbs of a nation that bases its national identity on liberté, egalitie, and fraternitiem, but seems to turn a blind eye on its large immigrant communities surrounding its largest cities, e.g. Paris and Marseilles. The book is also interesting due to its young author, herself a child of Algerian immigrants who grew up in the projects outside Paris.

Overall, not a great book, maybe not even a good book, but perhaps a necessary book. And, as noted above, it’s a quick read.

This coming of age novel was recommended to me by Rida and while I didn’t like it as much as I had hoped to, I did find it very stark and honest in its portrayal of life on the poor side in Paris, France. I don’t know about you guys but I have a very selective way of thinking about Paris. To me, it is the city of lights, romance and fluffy pastries. Before I read this book, I didn’t think about the people who populated the city, who breathe, live and animate this city. There’s this authenticity in the narrator’s voice, this matter of fact manner of relating facts that I could not help but respond to.

It did not surprise me when I read the author’s biography and found that the author experienced the same life she writes about. I don’t know whether it is the translation but this novel reads less like a fictional piece and more like documentary – raw, real and right there, in front of you. Doria’s observations about the hierarchy, the pain of being a girl when your father wanted a boy, wearing clothes that make other people smirk and laugh – these are just so on point. So on point that the line between reality and fictionality blurs significantly.

Some people have claimed this to be the French Catcher in the Rye and I don’t know if this comparison is apt. I do know that while the novel has no beginning, middle and end, there is no main narrative, it does give you a slice of the pie and ask that you taste it and make up your own mind about how much you like it. So yeah, while I didn’t love it unequivocally, it has merit and if you want to experience life in a very different pair of shoes, you should read this.

J'aimais bien ce livre. Faïza Guène est écrivaine avec plein d'esprit et douée. Son histoire est pure, qui le fait une bonne lecture. J'aimais spécialement la representation brute de la banlieue -- un lieu en Paris qui est normalement généralisé comme pauvre et louche -- qui était peint plus charmant. C'est une vraie représentation qu'on doit apprécier. Bien fait Mme Guène !