Jeanne Benameur: Ça t'apprendra à vivre (1989)

This is Jeanne Benameur's first novel, and is partly autobiographical: it describes the world through the eyes of a young child, like Benameur of mixed parents (the father Algerian, the mother Italian but speaking French) first in Algeria and then in a town on the Atlantic coast: Benameur's family moved from Algeria to La Rochelle during the Algerian war.

The initial pages of this short novel are concerned with the young girl's memories of Algeria in 1958, of the family's fears and the danger of its isolation because of its ambiguous status: this is a mixed marriage and the children are of mixed blood. When the family moves to France the narrator, although no longer in obvious danger, still feels like an outsider: she's ignored by her school companions because she has no exotic tales to tell of Algeria. Her defence is to lie.

Lying is one of the themes of the book, which is addressed to individual members of the family: most of it, unusually, is written in the 'tu' form. And a number of the very short chapters on her parents are negative: the mother stealing from a supermarket, the father beating the children, rowing with his wife, and visiting a prostitute.

What most impressed me was the vividness, the intensely realistic nature of the language which seeks to convey the ultra-sensitivity of the girl. For instance, I translate here the description of (an unknown) food cooking in a frying pan:

'It hisses it shudders it simmers.

The whole kitchen is occupied by the sounds. Tiny boiling bubbles come together in the middle of the pan. From time to time, it spits. A bubble bursts, tiny blisters spurt, explode above the fire.'

Similarly, watching a bowl of white coffee form a skin is minutely described, or eating a pomegranate, etc. I shall be reading more of Jeanne Benameur's work.