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La vie après

claire messud guillemette belleteste

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512pages. 19,8x13,6x4,2cm. Broché. Un vol. couv. imprimée, jaquette imprimée, illustrée, int. frais. Dans le sud de la France, Sagesse mène une adolescence dorée, toute auréolée de soleil, d'amitiés et de flirts. Mais un doux soir d'été, dans le palace de ses grands-parents, un coup de feu retentit, qui sonne le glas de cette quiétude insouciante et fait resurgir les fantômes du lourd passé pied-noir de la dynastie paternelle, toujours viscéralement attachée à une Algérie riche en couleurs et en parfums. L'adolescente va dès lors être confrontée aux blessures non cicatrisées des siens. Tiraillée entre des grands-parents tyranniques, une mère américaine et dépressive, un père rebelle et fuyant, et un frère handicapé et dépositaire de tous ses secrets, écartelée entre la France et les États-Unis, elle va devoir trouver sa voie et apprendre à mériter son prénom. Ce roman d'initiation, irradié par le soleil méditerranéen, fait s'affronter destinée pe

516 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1999
Literary awards
rsl encore award, 

This edition

Format
516 pages, Paperback
Published
January 24, 2001 by GALLIMARD
ISBN
9782070760664
ASIN
2070760669
Language
French

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About the author

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claire messud

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Claire Messud is an American novelist and literature and creative writing professor. She is best known as the author of the novel The Emperor's Children (2006).

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Community Reviews

Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
36(36%)
4 stars
35(35%)
3 stars
29(29%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
kintamautopia
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I’m on the fence on this one. I could never fully connect with any of the characters for any length of time and yet I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Maybe that was the point; each had their moments before being fractured as people, or fractured within the family unit. The scene in Algeria is one that will stay with me for a very long time.

So there you have it, the character of the father who is the most distasteful of all at the end is the most endearing in his youth with regards to his grandmother. The passing of the watercolor was also beautiful.

Paraphrasing a bit, my favorite passage is in regard to the debasement of the French Culture. “What motivates good behavior and what motivates excellence is the same thing. Fear of God, fear of the rod, fear of failure, fear of humiliation, fear of pain and in our society no one is afraid of anything. “

I guess there is much to take away from this book opening a discussion on many topics. It has sent me in search of books about the French in Algeria.
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Cobbles
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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What I enjoyed - themes related to colonialism, family, belonging, otherness.
What I did not enjoy- overly descriptive prose, Sargesse, the main character, lacked insight throughout, even as she aged into adulthood. Too much foreshadowing!

Finally, Sargesse's relationship with Etienne, her disabled brother, was gross and her thoughts about him and actions toward him seemed to be included purely for shock. I do not believe a girl, herself a virgin, would casually give her disabled brother a hand job. Her relationship to her mother is also puzzling.

Messud returns repeatedly to the idea that Etienne, in his passive existence somehow represents everyone, but quite clearly through all the choices every other character has the agency to make, that is not true.
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kyo_04
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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The novel is very well written and the language very rich and descriptive, especially when trying to convey feelings. Where it lacked, was in the development of characters that were actually likeable. I also found the thought processes of Sagesse as a 15 year old were not consistent with how a child of that age would think or understand when explaining the lives and feelings of other characters in the novel.
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SmallPeepee
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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A very well-written, largely unoriginal novel with tier one protagonist development. Messud can write, no doubt, the pages in Algeria are terrific and the trials of the family's daughter - not quite belonging to any culture or friend group, estrangement from her family, etc., are fully realized. The missteps are common to these kinds of novels - America does not exist outside New England, indigenous rights groups in Europe are evil (but treating Arabs like a servant class is totally cool), the teenagers are oversexed and there's infidelity and random incest - so edgy. These cringe-worthy components notwithstanding, the narrative is strong, the characters are interesting, and the scenes well-wrought. I'm glad I read this.
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zidanepiz
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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An interesting journey with a young girl as she develops into a young lady. The trials and tribulations of a family and how it affects her adolescents. She believes at first it started with one gunshot but as she looks deeper into her families past she realizes that the in fact the sequences of events started many,many years ago. Good read.
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mkzxwing
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I've never been a fan of philosophy, and tend to find French writers to be philosophical. Claire Messud is a philosophical French writer. The Last Life was both sprawling and fragmented, and if I were more interested in the main character's story it would've been easier to follow.

Sagesse is a French teenager. Her father is Algerian, her mother American, and her younger brother Etienne suffered brain damage at birth and is wheelchair bound. The family business is the Bellevue Hotel Sagesse's grandfather built and runs. Sagesse and her bratty pack of teenager friends (some tourists, some children of hotel employees) commandeer the hotel pool every evening, making a general nuisance of themselves until one night the grandfather can't take it anymore and comes out and threatens them with a gun. Parts of the book are pre-shooting, some post-shooting; some during the grandfather's youth, some the father's; Sagesse spends a summer with American relatives, she goes to her grandfather's trial, she becomes an American herself - but nothing happens in chronological order.

Albert Camus the philosopher is brought up a lot, he's pied-noir too (French-Algerian).
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fourthpetal
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Not my favorite writing style; far too many run on sentences and commas to describe every little thing. Nearly every sentence had 3 + commas!

Aside from that, the story was dreadfully boring.
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zaganGao
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Epic, deep, engaging, multi-layered, and beautifully written. I spent a lovely week with this book.
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