Messud has crafted a peripatetic novel based on her family history that stretches over most of the twentieth century. Her prose is elegant but this didn't completely work as fiction for me and I think I might have preferred the material as memoir.

There's a clear comparison to be made with [author:Leïla Slimani|8555975]'s ongoing fictionalising of her family history set in Morocco ([book:Le pays des autres|50819580]) as opposed to Messud's Algeria but their writerly strategies are quite different: Slimani keeps her work tight, focusing closely on a few characters so that we get to know them intimately; Messud does the opposite - she takes a far more scattershot approach jumping between focalised characters, places and times over a century from 1927 to 2010. The result for me was too distancing. It's a shame as the two openings are engrossing: a first person narrative from a descendant in 2010, and a third person story of her grandparents facing separation due to WW2. But after that, as we sweep through time in jumps of about a decade, I lost the connection to the story.

There are indications that this wants to be about, in part, the results of French colonialism in Algeria but the topic feels underweighted. It's not just big political movements like independence which are lost in the sweep but there's some confusion about the status of the Cassars and whether they have Algerian antecedents or are completely French. This is important because the framing device is that one of the factors behind the family's sense of homelessness springs from their colonial rootlessness: 'and the cost of their forefathers' sins, will be for them and their children to be cast from that illusory paradise, to wander the earth, belonging nowhere.'

In the end, I think I wanted a book that is more intimate like the opening of this one - once we jumped forward to the first ten year gap and a whole host of new characters appeared, I couldn't help feeling a bit short-changed. But that's a mismatch between me and the book: readers wanting a more sweeping history of a family's burgeoning generations through the twentieth century may well love this.

The novel is set around many locations in the world as a family tries to find its way back to each other. Retold over many decades, 1910 - 2010, we follow the family through heartache and tears, love and disappointment, through travel and settling into other landscapes. Emerse yourself in the brutal telling of the authors, Claire Messud, novel for it reflects some of her own life experiences. What are our experiences for if not to recall , retell, or write within such a masterpiece as this. They make the novel rich and compelling. Yes, there are areas that need resolve to read through, but don't let that detract or take away from this beautifully accomplished work. I thoroughly recommend this book. This Strange Eventful History is my first read of Claire Messud's work, and I will most certainly look for other works by this much talented author.
My thanks go to NetGalley and especially to the publishers Little Brown for my advance copy for my honest review.

An engrossing densely written read with a genuinely surprising twist in the final pages. This is a book to lose yourself in and savour.

Having read a book by this author before and enjoyed it I was intrigued to read another. A piece of historical fiction which so had so much promise based on the author’s stories from her own family but I only read half of it. Kind of book I usually love to get immersed in, historical, cultural and travelling the globe, however I just lost interest in the characters. A father based in Salonica says farewell to his family and sends them to the safety of his homeland in Algeria.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and publishers for an ARC in return for an honest review.

Strangely uneventful

This is such promising material but it seems to consist of one character explaining what's happened, then handing over to another character who explains the same thing, slightly differently. DNF

It took me some time to properly embed myself in this novel. It is a slow burn, a story of family, independence, war, dispossession, colonialism, post-colonialism, separation and the ties that bind.

The novel largely covers the twentieth century within a French Algerian family. The first generation, born in poverty, roams the globe which only proliferates through the generations with long sojourns in France, Middle-East, Argentina, Canada, USA, Australia and England. Whilst the deep roots at the heart of the story lie deeply in Algeria it seemed to me that for different reasons they were torn apart, leaving only fragments as world events, escapes and opportunities were forged.

I recently have read the first two published volumes of Leila Slimani's Moroccan trilogy which fictionalises (as does this book) her family story. Both Morocco and Algeria were considered departements of France until independence, after which the "French" population was left homeless. Each deal with their narratives differently.

Messud writes her story in one volume which moves between generations and time slots. Because of the global scale and points of view this gives a rather clunky, peripatetic immersive step into one life before the reader is required to change gear and re-calibrate for the next section. Slimani moves in a more linear way with the rising generation taking the lead in each book.

This is a challenging book yet one that grew on me. I found many sections overly complicated with superfluous detail. Whilst I accept that building a realistic picture needs substance, this was over-egged, in my opinion and the story lacked traction in these large sections. The long view on colonialism however was hugely rewarding. Is the reason, asks our Algerian grandfather, that the US and Australia are not taken to task as vehemently as European colonialists, because they largely decimated the first inhabitants, not attempting any level of sharing a society or integrating?

I think this novel will toss around my head for some time

With thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown UK for allowing me to read and review