The Last Life by Claire Messud

I didn't like the Emperor's Children, but everyone else did so I decided to try this book by the same author about a young girl growing up in France. I bought this for our trip to France but just got around to it now.

I liked it. It was a coming-of-age novel about a girl whose father is French and mother is American, who grows up in the hotel her family owns in the south of France. The writing was good albeit a bit pretentious, like Emperor's Children - she uses the word "simulacrum" within the first paragraph when "approximation" would have done just fine. The writing may have been a bit uneven, as I page through the book now, the style seems to change through the book although the narrator doesn't, and I don't think it's an (effective) effort to have the narrator mature. I also missed some references to Augustine and Camus that she returned to a few times.

All of that said, the writing style did not dampen my experience. The characters were compelling, the plot was interesting, and a few scenes were memorable enough to contribute to a good movie script. I'd consider this book 'recommended'.