Although the boy and the woman were not lovers, he seems obsessed with her now that she is gone. She was a teenager during WW II and the Nazi occupation of France. The woman who killed herself was about twenty years older than the young man. When he returns to Paris he learns more about the event and he realizes that he knew this woman and her husband twenty years ago when he was a youth back-packing across Europe. He happens to hear from the concierge that a French woman from Paris had committed suicide in the hotel last night. The real story begins while he’s in a hotel in Milan. At one point she writes him a note and he thinks “On the envelope…I recognized one of the qualities I most admired in my wife: the beautiful big handwriting of the illiterate that she was.” An intermediary sent by his wife tells him “She’s afraid you’re going to involve her in an adventure that leads nowhere…She told me that she isn’t twenty anymore.” On and off they try to get back together even though it seems he doesn’t hold her in very high esteem. He knows his wife is having an affair with one of the crew and she knows he knows. Some of his disillusionment is surely related to his marital situation. Yet he’s disillusioned by this work and feels the need to “grow up.” They are finishing up a project in Brazil and for the next one they will trace the route of 1931 auto expedition across Asia. The main character has what many folks, especially young people, would consider a dream job: he travels around the world with a crew making documentary films. I found the story riveting in the sense that I could have read it in a sitting (although I didn’t). Yet he’s disillusioned by this work and feel I really enjoyed this story by France’s 2014 winner of the Nobel prize. I really enjoyed this story by France’s 2014 winner of the Nobel prize.
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