Les Arrangements

A blended family gathers for a weekend around the agony of the head of the family, a former deportee and famous novelist. Wives and children alike, they have all lived their lives in relation to this tutelary figure, who encapsulates suffering and success in the same image. It has become a yardstick against which everyone feels inadequate, creating a sense of imposture in their own lives. How can we live up to this heritage? How to use it or get rid of it? The novelist's seductive biographer, a patchwork of cynical pragmatism, deftly plays with the ambivalence and guilt of each family member, claiming the lie as a possible truth, devilishly comforting and exhilarating in these times. While keeping pathos at bay, the author manages to touch a real pathos, the effects of which work underneath and far beyond the reading.