Life is a game of chance ... ?

Arguably.

Have just finished reading This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud, my first Booker longlist read this year. Something of an epic at 450 pages, it tells the story of a French Algerian family from 1940 through to 2010

BIT OF A SPOILER ALERT DEPENDING ON YOUR VIEW OF THINGS ...

although there is the literary equivalent of an "after credits" scene that contains a rather shocking and only passingly hinted at family secret that turns the book on its head. Or at least spins it through 180 degrees.

OK SAFE TO READ ON NOW!

The book is based on Messud's real life family history found in letters and journals and the long account of his early life left to her and her sister by their grandfather (although with several complex characters it is not clear how much the book is based on actual family members and how much is fictionalised - but there is a pretty good clue in this Guardian article). Certainly the alienation felt by the "pied noirs" after the granting of independence to Algeria is a historical fact and fully fleshed out particularly the characters of Gaston and Francois, the father and son who carry their loss of their homeland through the rest of their lives. They end up living in France, Australia, Argentina, America and Africa following work, fortunes and aspirations that are bound up with the upheavals of post war Europe, the collapse of the fourth French Republic and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Duty and discipline give way to technological change and massive cultural upheavals, throughout which the mainly Catholic family have to fave the many trials of loss, death, dementia, family dysfunction and self deceit. At times harrowing and remorseless it basically says that you either need religion or close friends and family (ideally both) to get you from birth to death without lapsing into a fatal depression. 

It's not a fun read. One of the characters is an emotionally self-flagellating alcoholic and I had to work hard not to reach for the strong stuff myself at times just to get through it. It is a book about intelligent, monied people who constantly bemoan the fact that they were never deemed clever enough or rich enough by the world around them, and to that extent it is difficult to empathise with the characters. But the deathbed scenes and the descriptions of dementia are vivid and personal and on those grounds alone you cannot help but connect and feel for them.

Is it a good book? Yes. Am I glad I read it? Yes. Would I read it again? No, I think I would have to reach for that bottle just to survive the experience. Will it win the Booker? Possibly. Samuel Becket would have appreciated it but he isn't a judge, and anyway he is dead.

On the plus side I painted a radiator today and did a few other useful bits. And we ate last night's leftover Chinese takeaway. So my life had meaning...