Sans Moi

By Marie Desplechin

Book Overview

The narrator of Sans Moi is a working single mother struggling to bring up her two young children. Olivia is a recovering drug addict and onetime prostitute who desperately needs a job. When Olivia - on the face of it a highly unsuitable babysitter - moves in, trailing her chaotic past behind her, their lives collide with unexpected results. In the year they live together, companionship, intimacy, and humor create a friendship full of vitality and mutual respect - as well as something of a family life.Marie Desplechin details this emotional terrain with delicate grace and irony. At once desperate and hopeful, Sans Moi explores the nature of friendship and the complicated dynamics of learning how to love and be loved.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312272146
• ISBN13: 9780312272142
• Release Date: February 2001
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.6" x 0.9" x 6.2"

Customer Reviews

Despleche Mode (And We Love It)

This is one of the most gentle narratives I've yet read, with Desplechin's ability to handle the complexities of her subject matter with a deft touch leaving the distinct feeling that the same material, in other writer's hands, could become more melodramtic and infinitely less effective. The novel focuses on two Parisian women, one a rehabilitating drug addict and the other a seperated successful freelance writer and mother-of-two, and the ups and downs of their relationship. What I really liked about the novel was the downplayment of the narration, which contains within it a very left-of-centre sense of humour, very cynical in its way, but ultimately very warming. Overall I found the book swift to read, and a novel that I would defy you not to enjoy.