** “The Last Life” by Claire Messud: Fifteen year old Sagesse La Basse muses about her life and family to an extent that is occasionally interesting, but mostly boring and without a central theme. Her American mother and French-Algerian father are respectively looked down upon and dominated by her martinet paternal grandfather and his patrician wife. The grandfather immigrated to France from Algeria, along with wife and daughter, to open a small hotel on France’s Mediterranean coast. They left Algeria because of the coming war for independence from France, but Algeria always remains their hearts’ homeland and seems to have a central role in Sagesse’s understanding or misunderstanding of her father and grandparents. This is a coming of age story with some of the typical teenage angst and rebellion, but having neither the charm nor the drama of most enjoyable novels of that genre. For reasons I cannot understand, the New York Times found “The Last Life” to be “a large and resonant novel that is as artful as it is affecting.” Horse races.

I could not finish this book. While the beginning of the book drew me in with the proper language and literary writing, I quickly became bogged down in the familial descriptions, locations, actions, and thoughts. Everything seemed to be following little veiny threads from what I began to think the book would lead and the threads would just disappear over the edges of the pages never to be picked up again.
Halfway through the book, I still was unsure of its purpose outside of the telling of a rather piece quilt of slightly interesting histories and lives that only seem to have one person in common and not much else.

I don't often give up on books, but nothing of interest had happened by page 150 or so. Because of that and because of all of these poor goodreads reviews, I gave up. The shooting incident was not at all dramatic, and I didn't care about the main character. I skipped ahead to see if it was going to get more interesting, and it didn't seem so. There are so many good books; why should I waste time on this one?

Claire Messud's writing is intelligent and poetic. There are moments where she evokes Whitman and Bellow and harnesses a rhythm as timeless as the Bible or Shakespeare. How sad to be saddled with such enormous talent and have nothing to say (apologies to John Prine). The 14 year-old protagonist observes much, but cares little. Messud writes, "I wanted, really, to write an essay about what it was like to be penned into a corner where every choice was wrong, where nobody would trust you and where the truth could not be told because it didn't exit." She succeeded.