Citizens of nowhere: This Strange Eventful History, by Claire Messud, reviewed

Any personal history is hard to fictionalise, not least because the story needs to be both universal and unique. Claire Messud manages to find the right balance in her latest novel, reconstructing her family’s past in vivid episodes that open a multitude of windows on to the world.

Continents and decades chase one another as the narrative traces the movements of the Cassar family. Hailing from Algeria, for much of the book they are citizens of nowhere. Their tribulations begin in 1940, when Lucienne and her children, François and Denise, flee Greece (where their father, Gaston, has been posted as the French naval attaché) to wait out the war in the relative safety of an Algerian hinterland. Soon Paris falls, and Charles de Gaulle, speaking from London, urges his compatriots to fight the enemy. What will Gaston do?

We learn about his decision in due course. With every chapter, the novel leaps through space and time: to Amherst, where François is studying in 1953, and to Buenos Aires, where Denise is struggling to find herself ten years later. Another decade on, there is a family reunion in Sydney, where François now lives. As his wife Barbara entertains her in-laws, we sense that she’ll always be an outsider among them.

The intermittent timeline still allows for continuity: Gaston and Lucienne are ageing happily; Denise is turning into a cartoonish old maid; François is ‘getting jowly’ and jaded; the kids are growing, ‘beauteous in their youth’. The book is written mostly in the third person, and when the younger daughter of François and Barbara takes over the narration for the odd chapter, it’s easy to guess that she represents the author.