Good writer, captures upper class NYC life well. Characters were well drawn, but it was a bit hard to care that much for them. She can write, though. It was a good story, but not sure I'd recommend given its length.

Perhaps the single most boring book I’ve ever read. No part of it interested me. And the device of slipping back in time to tell stories that affected decisions in the present was overdone and a waste of words in every instance.

Well written, some very beautiful and moving passages in a coming of age story of 15 year old Sagesse, living in France with an Algerian father and American mother. Conflicts and family drama wrapped in the France-Algerian war, family wealth, social and economic class, yet none of these issues had any punch for me. I got tired of the story about 2/3 of the way through; kept going because I felt something else had to happen. It didn't.

Claire Messud's prose is enough to make one gasp, ruminate, grab a dictionary, or all three at once. Her writing is so robust, this book can not be read quickly. It demands a slower pace, all the better to absorb the audacious phrasing.

This is the story of Sagasse, told in first person, and her coming of age. She learns to think for herself as her mother reveals some less than stellar family history. Her mother is American, her father French-Algerian, and he works for her grandfather at a high-end hotel in the south of France.

Go forth and read. Savor. Enjoy.

Generous use of commas and parenthesis resulting in long rambling sentences. Lots of commentary, very slight story line. Toward the end I started skimming, was tempted to put it down, probably should have done.

Sagesse was born in Southern France, but is now an American due to past challenges her family faced. Sagesse embraces Americas opportunities and free choices, and she compares life in America to life in France. Sagesses past was formed by adultery, suicide, and exile. She wants to study her family's history and learn more about her ancestors and father. Now living in New York, and attending Columbia University and studying the history of ideas, Sagesse reaches out to her mother and grandmother in hopes of learning about her father and why their family was forced to leave France. Sagesse wants to better her future by having a deeper understanding of her past.

Something I liked about this book was that it was easy to connect and relate to. I also like this book because it talks about Identity, culture, and starting fresh. One thing I didn't like about this book was the plot was hard to follow at times.

I recommend this book to anyone that likes realistic fiction or coming-of-age.

I will say I don’t have a ~sophisticated~ taste in books. I’ve loved her other books but I could not get into this one. Nothing pulled me in. The subplot was kind of confusing especially with the back and forth and different times in history. I finished it but was hardly taking anything in I was so bored.

Elegiac would be a cliched way to describe the coming of age narrative. The story is deceptively simple on its surface, but beneath the description of a teenaged girl's seemingly innocent summer experiences lies a philosophical depth. Messud wraps the girl's tale within the story of three generations of a Pied-Noir family, their experiences in Algeria and in metropolitan France, and adds just a touch of literary history by examining St. Augustine and Albert Camus.

Messud, much like DeLillo, somehow in the 90s looked forward to our age of terrorism and multicultural conflict and describes what would come. He narrative includes hints of anti-Muslim sentiment, the rise of new right wing extremists (she mentions Le Pen often) and the truth of what it means to be a refugee in a capitalism sterilized of both memory and meaning.

This work is layered with symbolism, from her brother's isolation to her father's death, and examined in the context of Camus and Augustine and their conflicting conclusions regarding the value of struggle.

The criticisms of the book's languid and "boring" pace are understandable, but anyone with a love of the Mediterranean, knowledge of Camus' Algeria or an interest in lyrical prose will find Messud's descriptive and sentence-level craft a distinct pleasure.

3.5.

this one read like messud was trying on a proustian sweatshirt. messud's prose, in her other books i've read, wasn't nearly this languorous, this—to its mild detriment—meandering.

I almost gave up on this book. I thought the writing style was overly descriptive. It would've taken me forever to finish if I looked up every word that I had never seen before. I like books that challenge me but the vocabulary of this book just seemed unnecessary. Every once in a while though, there would be a great sentence that made you stop and re-read it, appreciating it's meaning.

This is a beautifully written, layered and complicated novel. I found it slow going but totally worth the effort.

This was the first, but won't be the last, Messud book I read. A beautiful writer, she expertly creates characters with deep personalities and backstories. Slow to unravel, and gently looping through time and various characters' stories, the novel took, and deserved, time to explore its intricacies and language. I frequently say the stories of "the old person remembering life" are lazily written and terribly structured, and The Last Life is evidence to support my belief. Messud moves seamlessly through generations, weaving stories, echoing histories and creating new ones. The reader learns of generations of stories, woven through time, organically. In this time of 'stay-at-home' life, this novel was a treasure to savor.