"I'm a writer; I tell stories,' reads the first line of Claire Messud's This Strange Eventful History, a novel based on her own family's past...I want to save life."
This Strange Eventful History aims to preserve and cherish the beauty and sorrow of a way of life since passed from this earth and in danger of being lost to memory...a midlife novel reflecting the sudden knowledge of reality ceding to another.
The novel begins in 1940 with historical events like the fall of Paris to the Nazis, and ends years later with François' death in Connecticut... each chapter told from a different character's perspective.
Chloe, the protagonist, comes into possession of her family's history and her aunt's diary, which form the basis of the novel, weaving an adult child's evolving understanding of her unhappy parents.
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