I love a multigenerational family tale, one that sweeps across history and continents. And in that, this novel succeeds, with lovely writing, to boot. The story of the Cassar family is a fictional version of Messud’s own history, and hinges on the point at which her French Algerian family grapples with the history (and future) of colonialism around World War II. Messud’s own great grandfather wrote an in-depth family history, which would later take Messud (and her fictional counterpart within this novel) 20 years to digest, and lead to this retrospective of a family tree searching for roots.
The Cassar’s were French, but having lived their entire lives in Algeria they felt far more connection to Africa than Europe. Gaston Cassar, the patriarch, was a naval officer in WWII. Early in the novel we learn that he is deeply in love with and devoted to his wife Lucienne – and slowly, even through the final pages of the novel, information about their pairing is doled out, almost as afterthoughts. Very subtle cues about the nature of their relationship recast their love, and a reveal in the final chapter threatens to over score their entire storyline.
The first part of the novel gives perspective to Gaston and his children, Francoise and Denise. Gaston has generally kept his family with him as he travels with the navy, whether stationed in Beirut or Greece, but he and Lucienne feel their home is Algeria. Lucienne and the children are left to find a safe place to weather the storm of WWII, which is swiftly approaching. Gaston must decide whether to defy the Nazis or follow the orders of his superiors.
From this beginning, the novel jumps through time, growing in perspectives, following these characters as they age and acquiring new ones through marriage and birth. Denise grows in to an anxious woman, prone to illness and perpetually afraid to truly inhabit her life. Francoise moves to America and marries a woman utterly different from him, their marriage playing out with regular literal continental divides.
While full of beautiful prose, the book had a tendency to lapse into long passages about oil concerns or other business dealings. Occasionally there would be a treatise about geopolitics that felt so heavy handed it veered into preaching. I would have enjoyed the novel a bit more with a heavier hand at editing. Messud is so gifted at crafting characters and giving them a truly human(e) evolution, I was frustrated when we were reading about anything outside of their relationships. Yes, so much happens in the world, and often it enhances the stories of characters – but in this novel, I would have preferred a more singular focus on the inner, rather than outer, worlds of the characters.
Ultimately, this was a case of too much great writing. I wanted to read this story, and most of the time I loved the writing – but nearly every time I picked the book up to read, I came across a passage that just could not keep my attention. I ended up skimming sections, which is a sign that I was devoted to the book, the writing and the story – all good things! But also a sign that the novel was missing something that keeps the reader powerfully hooked on every word.