Book Review: “A Good Life” by Virginie Grimaldi
Sibling Rivalry
I have a sister that I’m a little estranged from. The fault is mostly mine: I wasn’t that great of a big brother to the sibling who was five years younger than me. Why would I bring up this painful fact? The truth is that it’s the only way I can think of leading into Virginie Grimaldi’s French novel (and debut release in English), A Good Life. The book concerns two sisters who were born five years apart from each other, Emma and Agathe. The two couldn’t be more different. Emma lives the good life — happily married with a couple of kids — and Emma suffers from bipolar disorder and has made a suicide attempt or two. They haven’t talked to each other in five years. Still, the now middle-aged sisters patch their relationship by vacationing for precisely a week at their recently deceased grandmother’s home in the Basque Country before it goes up for sale. There’s a reason for the repaired relationship, but it doesn’t get revealed until a twist ending. Instead, the novel tells its tale in the alternating voices of the two sisters and flashbacks to various points in their lives. We find out that the sisters’ father died when they were young, and their mother — an alcoholic — was abusive towards them. It turns out that the only place they found solace was their grandmother’s, and it turns out that even she had a secret she hid from the family.
While much of the plot in a book is ostensibly about two people doing absolutely nothing for a week, the book picks up about halfway through as the timelines of the sisters’ flashbacks turn to adulthood. There are tears over the movie Titanic, boyfriends get dumped when the girls find out their squeezes are cheating on them, and Emma longs to conceive children but initially has trouble doing so. Meanwhile, Agathe is busy cutting her thighs as a coping mechanism for dealing with her mother. Ultimately, this is a weighty book full of ups and downs. It’s also very much a women’s novel to some degree; this is a book about sisters. Still, the story swept away even a curmudgeonly guy like me. There’s a lot of darkness and much light to be had here. The sisters both find a way to overcome the abusive relationships in their family, for instance. However, it does take time to warm up to this book. Part of the reason is the very beginning flashes back to the girls’ youngest memories, which consist of Agathe pooping in Emma’s bathwater and Agathe learning how to talk. In other words, the first little piece of the book is a chore to get through.
But, as noted, things do pick up. This is one of those books you must stick with to have its charms revealed to you, the reader. Thus, A Good Life is a tough uphill climb, but when you reach the top, you are exhilaratingly rushed downhill. Part of the reason is that the end of each character’s section in the book’s latter pages finishes on cliffhangers, which keeps the reader interested and wanting to know as much as possible about whatever revelation is being revealed. To that end, you wind up loving the characters, too, as messeld up as they can be at times. That doesn’t mean the novel isn’t without problems: I wanted to know more about the mother, not through the child-colored glasses of a flashback to youth. I wasn’t too sure about the father character either — I vaguely recall that he might have died in a car accident — because not much detail was expended upon him. What was he like? How did he put up with his wife’s alcoholism? Or did the alcoholism start once he died? And so on. There are missing pieces to this narrative puzzle simply because it’s shoehorned in by the sisters’ memories: everything that happens is filtered through and processed by their recollections. However, such complaints detract from the book’s tone: this is supposed to be a reasonably lightweight take on serious family problems, as told from two competing viewpoints. Nothing more, nothing less.
A Good Life is an enjoyable, fun novel if you can get past the weighty overtones. The last half of the book will keep you on the edge of your seat, wanting to see how things will end for these characters. To that end, some tears will be shed along the way. This is one of those books where you should keep the Kleenex close at hand. However, those tears will be bittersweet because, as the title suggests, the characters have had a good run at things, and I don’t want to say anything else to ruin the twist ending. Still, the novel lulls the reader into a state where crucial details will go unnoticed, and the signs of what eventually happens are unpredictable and unseen. Grimaldi does a deft job of containing secrets and surprises until the point of climaxing action and not revealing any of these things a moment too soon. That said, perhaps the novel would have more gravity if the big secret had been revealed much earlier — it would make the sisters’ eventual reconciliation feel more earned, I suppose. Still, this is minor carping. A Good Life is a pleasant book, especially for those with siblings who don’t always see eye to eye. This is worthy of a look for the curious, and such readers will be amply rewarded with a delectable tale worthy of a wet eye or two. Enjoy!
Virginie Grimaldi’s A Good Life was published by Europa Editions on May 28, 2024.
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