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Marie Darrieussecq Bref sejour chez les vivants Paris. POL. 2001. 308 pages EUR19.06. ISBN 2-86744-844-1
MARIE DARRIEUSSECQ'S two previous novels deal with disappearance (of a husband in Naissance des fantomes, 1998 [see WLT 72:4, p. 7931) and flight (of a mother and daughter in Mal de mer, 1999 [see WLT 74:1, p. io4]). Her fourth novel, Bref sejour chez les vivants, focuses on another loss and the individual strategies of four women - a mother and her three daughters - as they attempt to escape from its pain. The parents are divorced, with the father, an Anglo-Irishman, now living in Gibraltar, where he is involved in advanced wind technologies, and the mother having remarried. The eldest daughter, Jeanne, lives in Argentina;...