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Jul 01, 2011

Kirstie rated it:

This was a much better book in many ways than The Emperor's Children but still revolves around the legacy of a wealthy family. Most of the book is set in France and Algiers but some of it is set in the United States on the East Coast. At its core, this book is an exploration of identity centered around a protagonist female who is "coming of age." At the same time, growing up with a brother who has a serious disability (from the sounds of the description, severe profound cognition and More...

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Jan 26, 2011

Darryl rated it:

** “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 l More...

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Oct 04, 2010

emi rated it:

I've never been a fan of philosophy, and tend to find French writers to be philosophical. Claire Messud is a philosophical French writer. The Last Life was both sprawling and fragmented, and if I were more interested in the main character's story it would've been easier to follow.

Sagesse is a French teenager. Her father is Algerian, her mother American, and her younger brother Etienne suffered brain damage at birth and is wheelchair bound. The family business is the Bellevue Hot More...

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Sep 20, 2007

Ursula rated it:

Like The Emperor's Children, The Last Life created its distinct seductive mood, while still providing recognizable (and relatable) details of, in this case, the life of a teenage girl forced to think for herself. Though I enjoyed, and perhaps related more to, the satire of literary academia in The Emperor's Children, The Last Life was a deeper, and sweeter read.

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Dec 08, 2011

Mirjam rated it:

Best book I've stumbled across in the past two years. Thank you sales rack at the San Francisco airport.

Wonderfully written, for starters. Prose you can dive into and roll around in -- without it seeming presumptuous. Wordy without being wordy, if you will, which is the point of words. Word?

And wonderfully developed, a family drama that reaches realistically and painfully back and forth between Algeria then and France now -- all of it, as all of our own family dramas do, aff More...

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Jul 30, 2010

Chris rated it:

A coming of age story, a French-American girl named Sagese is trying to figure out all that entails being a half American-French girl growing up with French-Algerian heritage in metropolitan France. Dealing with an atypical mother/father and in-house living situation with the father's parents (Sagese's paternal grandparents), we follow as she deals with situations that a 15 year old girl must cope with.

The novel is written from Sagese's perspective and contains a lot of the characteri More...

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Jan 07, 2010

Jinny rated it:

The Last Life was movingly written; not happy, but deeply affecting. The last third of the book was the best, as the protagonist reflects on what has happened and the personalities and motivations of family members driving the story's action.

For me as a young middle-aged adult, the book raised a lot of interesting -- sometimes painful, but also hopeful -- questions about identity, choice, 'starting fresh,' and many other issues. Sagesse, the narrator, did a beautiful job of communic More...

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Jul 13, 2009

Kate rated it:

Moving across generations and continents, from colonial Algeria to the south of France to New England, this novel reveals the secret histories of the LaBasse family. It is narrated by Sagesse LaBasse, a young (15-year-old) French-American, who lives in France with her Algerian-born father, American-born mother and her brother, Etienne, who is unable to move or speak on his own due to an accident during his birth. Other significant characters include Sagesse's paternal grandparents, who run the More...

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Nov 04, 2010

Carolyn rated it:

Exceptionally well-written; richly describes contemporary Algerian history from the perspective of priveledged French teenager. Messud is impressive.

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Jan 18, 2008

Deborah rated it:

It's a little hard to connect with Messud's characters. At her best, it's more like being benignly haunted than reading.

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Jun 30, 2009

Helynne rated it:

I love stories about French colonial Algeria and its aftermath. Claire Messud’s The Last Life (2000), is a particularly moving character study of how the violence and regret for that period as well as the dual cultural identity can affect a French family for generations. The LaBasse family lives in an unnamed city on the Mediterranean coast of France during 1989-90. In this milieu, 14-year-old, Sagesse (the name means "wisdom") lives near her family’s three-star Bellevue Hotel wit More...

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Jul 22, 2009

Tony rated it:

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 a More...

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Dec 09, 2008

MJ rated it:

I’m on the fence on this one. I could never fully connect with any of the characters for any length of time and yet I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Maybe that was the point; each had their moments before being fractured as people, or fractured within the family unit. The scene in Algeria is one that will stay with me for a very long time.

So there you have it, the character of the father who is the most distasteful of all at the end is the most endearing in his youth with reg More...

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Oct 06, 2008

Jennifer (JC-S) rated it:

‘When I was a little girl, I had believed that if you looked long enough and hard enough into a picture you might enter into it..’

Ms Messud’s second novel tells the story of Sagesse LaBasse and her family. Geographically, the novel moves between Algeria, France and the USA. Sagesse’s mother is American, her father and his parents are repatriated French Algerians. Each family member is haunted by different aspects of the past, each reacts differently to the reality of the present. More...

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Dec 28, 2009

Magdalene rated it:

Claire Messud impresses me with her ability to tell a story in all its complexity. In this, her second novel, what could be read as a bildungsroman, told through the p.o.v. of Sagesse, her protagonist, she recounts the multi-generational narrative of a pied-noir family living in Marseille after the end of the French-Algerian war. Nostalgia, home, and the myopia of history are all part and parcel of this detailed contemplation of what it is that we inherit at birth, without answering why.

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Jul 09, 2011

Jennifer rated it:

Claire Messud is a gifted writer and every line is crafted. I found myself unable to put this book down because of her beautiful prose, but the storyline utself was mediocre. I found the same kind of letdown at the end of this novel as her previous novel, "The Emperor's Children". What was it really all about in the end and what larger truth about life was revealed? I'm still not sure, but would probably still read her next book to see if her stories can grow as compelling as her w

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Oct 11, 2009

Lauren rated it:

Beautifully written. Messud portrays the narrator's conflicted love for her mentally and physically disabled brother with great understanding and compassion. I couldn't decide between 3 and 4 stars though because I couldn't otherwise relate to the narrator and her family. Sometimes when this happens it is a failure on the author's part and sometimes on the reader's. I'd love to hear what someone else thought of this. 3/09

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Feb 09, 2009

Fionnuala rated it:

I really ought to give up on Claire Messud. She writes about big issues I am interested in - the fallout from the French leaving Algeria in this book - but somehow deals with them in such a way that I find I care less at the end of the book than I did at the beginning. Contrast the Michael Haneke film Caché, that dealt with the same subject so much more powerfully. I think, perhaps, it's that she doesn't take many risks as a writer, doesn't let the really powerful undercurrents rise up into h More...

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May 11, 2011

Sharon rated it:

The novel is very well written and the language very rich and descriptive, especially when trying to convey feelings. Where it lacked, was in the development of characters that were actually likeable. I also found the thought processes of Sagesse as a 15 year old were not consistent with how a child of that age would think or understand when explaining the lives and feelings of other characters in the novel.

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Jan 27, 2011

Mlg rated it:

Messud is a talented writer who creates memorable characters in this tale of a family in French Algiers. The narrator is a young girl coming of age who sees only parts of what is happening in her family. My only criticism of the book is that all of the characters are so miserable. The misery lifts a little at the end, but not much.

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Jan 10, 2011

Ramona rated it:

So far, I am not that impressed. Messud shows a lot of skills, but her over-the-top prose (with many words you only come across when studying for your GREs) seems ill-fitting when writing from the perspective of a teenage girl. I find it hard to connect to the protagonist, and now at page 285, I have stopped caring to know anymore.
One of the few books I have abandoned.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 13, 2011

Judy rated it:

Even though it was written, in the first person, from the perspective of a young woman, it told the story of that woman's teen age years, and it felt so real, so young. The family story was woven in in a way that felt effortless to the reader, back and forth in time easily, neither confusing nor plodding.

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Aug 27, 2009

Laura rated it:

I was easily able to get into this book. At the beginning it seemed like a light, easy read, and as the book goes on you dig deeply into the history & background of each character, how the web of history affects everyone else without realizing the extent that it might. It was a good read.

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Mar 28, 2010

Elizabeth rated it:

Really depressing and I didn't like her writing. I got so I would read the first line of paragraphs and skip to the next just to move the book along. I read it to help learn about French/Algerian history, which I did, but I just didn't like the book.

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Mar 11, 2011

Kayzee rated it:

I don't know what it is about Messud's writing that I like but her books draw me in. As I've written in my review of The Emperor's Children, I'm not a big fan of lengthy description but her style does not repel me. The Emperor's Children I think was better written but The Last Life holds its own too. This book gave me a lot of insights into identity - who a person is and what makes that person - and choice.

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Jul 24, 2010

Denise rated it:

I just put this book on hold again at the library. I read it seven years ago on a trip and it just took my breath away-- not easy for me on a plane. I rushed home and read all of Messud's books as quickly as I could.

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May 02, 2010

Deborah marked it as to-read

Recommended by my husband. Copy available in the local library. I mistakenly purchased a copy ($9.50 used at Powell's City of Books) so am giving it to my bibliophile brother who's heard of Claire Messud but has yet to read her.

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Feb 22, 2010

Molly rated it:

This is a book of (gradually) accumulated power from a very interesting writer. Claire Messud's prose never soars. It is clunky, workmanlike, didactic. Sometimes you wonder why you are reading a story that has no obvious goal or significance. And yet I found myself wrapped up in the bleak little life that dwells in this book's pages, and nearly stunned by the combined force of its many strands (love and marriage, France and Algeria, childhood and adolescence and adulthood, family and independenc More...

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Dec 07, 2010

stacy rated it:

writing this review through the goodreads iPhone app.

I like it but not nearly as much as I liked emperors children.

I wonder if only reading it at night while half asleep had something to do with that.

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Feb 16, 2009

Sandy rated it:

I was fascinated with the theme of place in this novel and how identity is connected to place.
Also, issues of French colonists in Algeria and their strong attachment to their lives in Africa.

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