The Easy Life

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Francine Veyrenattes recounts – or recalls – how her brother Nicolas fights to the death with their uncle Jérôme; how the family discreetly and securely surrounds the dying man; how the freedom that Nicolas has thus conquered leads him to love, and then to death. At the same time, Francine is also led to love, and their parents to madness. The narrator's impassivity creates a strangely quick sound. The necessity of such indifference, which so obviously follows the essence of things, makes her furious and inconsolable. Indifferent, she is in fact the only driving force of the drama. She alone wanted it, provoked it. She is unaware of it herself. She becomes increasingly aware of it as she tells the story. This discovery even becomes the true subject of the book – which is the gradual purification of a soul – and its main appeal. One promises: "We will have a peaceful life." From the depths of great fatigue, one finally wants to be loved, and to love. And to have children. This life is sincere. These children will be posthumous. One is willing to accept happiness. It is that one is finally simple. It is that one is finally dead. It is that one can finally live "like everyone else, the most to be pitied, like everyone else."