This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud is a fictional drama based on the author’s own multi-generational family, covering seven decades of family history and moving from Salonica in Greece, to French (colonial) Algeria to France, Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, Australia and the United States. Each chapter is told from the perspective of another family member, and their stories move in and out, identified by the year and geographic setting. Gradually the reader comes to understand the grandparents, adult children, grandchildren not only from their own telling of their stories but from others’ perceptions of them.

Grandfather Gaston Cassar considered himself French. Based in Algiers, he fought for the French against the Germans in 1940. Then, for safety, he sent his wife, Lucienne, and children, Denise and Francois, to Algiers, considering it to be their homeland. A naval officer in service to France, he spent years in postings in Greece, France, Lebanon and elsewhere but always gravitated back to Algeria. In 1959-1960, he and his family were force to flee during Algeria’s battle for independence from France. He left behind a 1000-page handwritten family history that became the foundation of Messud’s Booker-listed novel.

Son Francois’s brilliance is rewarded with a scholarship to the United States and post-graduate work at Harvard.  We travel through the decades of his life, the challenges and rewards of his marriage, his inner travails, his philosophical struggles and family ties. So, too, with his Canadian wife, Barbara, and on to their children (author Messud’s generation), who also divide their time between the United States and Europe.  At the end, we have been immersed in their intense family relationships, professional ambitions, devout and anti-religious beliefs, accomplishments and failures. We travel for decades with these characters, as they move, change and, yes, age. We are touched to understand the complexities and contradictions of their lives and develop empathy for disparate elements of the human experience.

We share their debates about colonialism, sacrifices for upward mobility within France’s rigid social structure, adapting to changing generational mores at home and abroad, intellectual sensibilities struggling to breathe within corporate metrics of accomplishment.

The author moves seamlessly between and among locations and characters. Messud’s writing is exquisitely descriptive, painterly without being forced, with fresh imagery on every page, making the reader want to reread pages just for the pleasure of the elegance of the writing. I highly recommend this book and want to return to it myself for a second go-through.

I welcome your feedback – and your book recommendations -in the comments section on the home page. To be alerted when a new blog is posted, look for “Follow’ in the upper right portion of the home page, enter your email and click on subscribe. And, if you enjoy reading my blog, tell your friends about it.