I love a multigenerational story and this one did not disappoint. It's long and a bit of a slow burn but totally worth the read. The writing is gorgeous and the ending completely surprised me. Based on her family's history, this is clearly a personal story for Messud and the complex and richly drawn characters are a testament to her love for her ancestors. This book made me think and I won't soon forget it.

Thanks to WW Norton for the copy to review.

Claire Messud’s "This Strange Eventful History" promises an evocative journey through the life of a WWII-era Algerian family, steeped in the author’s own heritage. Spanning from the chaos of war to contemporary struggles, it follows Francois and Denise as they navigate a world defined by dislocation—Francois seeking a sense of belonging while his sister turns to alcohol in her search for solace.

While the themes of uprootedness resonate powerfully, I found the narrative lacking the imaginative spark I crave in fiction. It often felt more like a detailed family chronicle than a dynamic tale, with little suspense to propel the reader forward. Messud certainly sheds light on the complexities of identity and displacement, yet I yearned for richer character development and a more engaging plot. Still, the book offers valuable insights into Algeria, France, and the repercussions of war, making it an important, if not wholly satisfying, read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC which I received in exchange for my honest review.

This Strange Eventful history was an excellent read. I love Messud's writing. I really appreciated the family dynamics and shifting timelines.

Messud's novel, covering almost a history and based on her family history, features undeniably elegant prose but was not really what I was expecting. I am not sure it worked as a novel; at least; it did not hold this reader's interest; I had a hard time getting immersed or invested in it. I might have found myself more interested if this were told as a personal memoir.

Messud is one of my all-time favorite writers, and Strange Eventful History did not disappoint. It's easily my favorite title of hers since The Emporer's Children - deeply layered and complex, rich characters and transportive descriptions.

This novel is a multi-generational story of the Cessar family, an Algerian French clan loosely based of Messud’s own family history which begins during WWII and spans to 2010. The family’s roots begin with the love story of Gaston and Lucienne, their mythological love sustains them but make the next generations’ relationships more difficult. The novel is told from multiple perspectives but mainly the granddaughter Chloe’s who attempts to discover why her parents are so unhappy in their marriage while her grandparents were so in love; and her discovery is actually quite shocking.

I have read many of Messud’s books throughout the years and have loved every one that I have read so I was very excited that she had another one coming out. This was not one of my favorites of hers while I was reading it, however the surprise ending and learning of the history behind the story afterwards gave me a new appreciation for it. The concept that the idealized marriage of the foundational relationship of a family having a secret made me look back on the novel in a completely different light. I guess I would say this is one of those novels that I appreciated more after than during; that’s not to say I didn’t find the story interesting at times, it just was a bit slower than I generally like.

I'd never read Claire Messud before. Where have I been?

This Strange Eventful History is a generation- and continent-spanning novel about the Cassar family – French settlers in Algeria. It echoes the history of Messud's own family.

Gaston, an officer in the French Navy, faces difficult decisions when France falls to Nazi Germany. He sends his wife, Lucienne, and their children Francois and Denise to stay with relatives in Algiers. Gaston, Francois and Denise narrate alternating chapters. The other narrators, in later years, are Barb, Francois' wife, and their daughter Chloe.

The simplest explanation of this novel is that it follows this family through key events, including World War II, Algeria's war for independence from France, feminism and economic changes. But that sells it short. It's also about love, friendship, aging and death, and all the ways we can be alienated from our country, ourselves, our families.

Often I like to say, if you liked such-and-such book, you'd like this one. But I struggle to find a comparison here. Highly recommended. I'll leave it at that.

*I received an early review copy from NetGalley.

I've loved all the Claire Messud books that I've read. This one was a little more diffuse than I generally like -- readers will want to know it's not as heavy on a central plot, but rather moves between characters and time periods. They're all interesting and the settings are varied and unusual. I enjoyed reading all of them though I maybe felt a little more disconnected from the overall story than with her other books.

Claire Messud's writing is dense and rich and deep--I am so glad her work crossed my path a number of years ago when a New York Times review of The Emperor's Children came out. She continues to amaze me.

I have loved everything of Claire Messud, and this was no exception. A fascinating history I did not know, delivered in a gorgeously written and very personal story.

How was this my first Claire Messud? This was stunning. The 500 page went down so smoothly. I thought this might be confusing when I saw this was multigenerational, but the way Messud tells the story it was so easy to follow and hard to look away from. This is not your average WWII novel. It is so much more. The ending will leave readers feeling very fulfilled or very angry and that is my absolute favorite kind of book.

While Messud's epic loses its way somewhat in the final third, that's all generally for the right reason. She is creating a multigenerational epic here but not one where the different tendrils need to knit back neatly together into a grand theme. This is a powerful story about how the loss of place (in this case, the wrenching away of the family's <i>pied-noir</i> roots) can leave people unmoored for generations after generations. Messud somehow manages the trick of not romanticizing the past while still not pretending some times and places are simply more resonant than others. A lovely kind of sad.

This book follows members of the Cassar family from the early days of WWII to the early 2000s. We get little glimpses inside various members’ minds as the book jumps forward in time. It is difficult to say what the plot is, because the book is really just dipping into various character’s points of view. The author seems to avoid anything that might be interesting—the experience of living through WWII in Algeria, Algerian independence for pieds noirs. Instead, we get a snippet afterwards, but nothing happens in these snippets.

This was wonderfully written book! The characters were frustratingly human. I love books that go through the many decades and really follow each character's life and this book did this very well. It was a great read!

This Strange Eventful History is Claire Messud's best work to date, which is really saying something. A powerful multi-generational novel in the order of One Hundred Years of Solitude or Barkskins, This Strange Eventful History tells the story of the Cassars, driven apart by geopolitical strife, and struggling to maintain their sense of identity. Generations and branches of the family tree are spread out across the world and throughout time they stretch and grow in a myriad of ways, resenting their family ties and expectations while also becoming something new with each new homeland they take on.

This is a big story and it included a lot of detail, a lot of domestic minutiae that some may feel pulls the story down. I felt like all of the specifics of daily life really colored in how much time and space changed the members of the family, in the way that only time and space can do. It was an ambitious novel, largely inspired by Messud's family history, and it was one that will stay with me for a long time.

This is a family saga following several generations of a family, beginning with an Algerian couple deeply in love (Gaston and Lucienne). We follow them as they deal with the vicissitudes of World War II–including separation from each other and their beloved homeland–and then follow their children and grandchild, tracing their personal histories in Europe and America.

This is a slow, beautifully written novel told with intimate detail. Whether we are feeling Gaston’s deeply tender, aching, bodily love for Lucienne, following two children under a hot sun in an unfamiliar city, experiencing the postwar United States through the eyes of an expatriate son, or watching the family patriarch live out his last days in a hospice, we are enfolded in the characters’ living, breathing personal experiences.

THIS STRANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY is not a novel of plot and events–though historical events dramatically shape this family’s history–but of daily experience within the long arc of history. For those who appreciate novels built out of freshly-rendered, layered detail, this is a worthwhile read.

Many years ago, I read Claire Messud’s book “The Woman Upstairs.” I don’t remember much about it except that it was wonderful. I was happy to receive a copy of Ms Messud’s new novel “This Strange Eventful History” from W.W. Norton and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Spoiler alert: Messud is a terrific storyteller and her writing ability is incredible.

This is an expansive family saga as well as a lesson about the history of Algeria. The story of the Cassar family is told over seven generations, and covering several geographic areas. In 1945, right after World War II, there was a massacre that was a turning point in the relationship between Algeria and France (which had invaded Algeria in 1830. The massacre marked the beginning of the war for Algerian Independence, which concluded in 1962. After Independence, the Cassar family is without a homeland, They were separated during the chaos of the War, and the family history is covered in a beautifully written style.

Gaston and his wife Lucienne have what might look like a perfect love/marriage, but it is stifling to their children Denise and Francois. Francois has his own complicated relationship with a woman named Barbara who is so totally different from his family, they can barely communicate. Their daughter Chloe thinks that telling the long-silenced family stories will make the family heal. Along the way, as the family struggles with many things, we see them move from Algeria to what is now Macedonia, then France, Australia, Switzerland, Toronto, and the U.S.

The events are inspired by (possible a retelling of?) Messud’s own family stories. It’s a treat to read – I love books that entertain me while teaching me about things I never knew. (In this way it reminds me of J. Lahiri’s Low Country). Five stars!

This completely enveloping story tells the tale of three generations of a French-Algerian family from the 1940s to 2010. Gaston and Lucienne wonder if their love is the masterpiece of their lives and little do they know that the perfection of their relationship will set a standard for following generations. As a member of the French Navy, he and his family live around the Mediterranean with the plan to return to their beloved Algiers, But even though the Cassar family has lived in Algeria for more than a century, they must leave when Algeria becomes independent of France. They are unmoored, even though son Francois is gathering advanced degrees across Europe and North America; his attempt to free his family from what he sees as their genteel poverty.

But there's a strangeness--their Gaston's anxious daughter Denise will spend her whole life wondering who and what she is. Francois, their son, marries a woman so different that it's hard to imagine them on the same astral plane. There's anxiety, depression, paranoia in the Cassar family, not so different from many families, yet somehow very different indeed. What if the grandparents' deep and abiding love is more than the family understands?

I was embraced by "This Strange Eventful History" from the first paragraph. Claire Messud's expression of Algeria in the 1920s when Gaston and Lucienne's unlikely love blossoms is entrancing, as is raising their family around the middle east before WWII, and taking refuge in Algeria during the war and seeking a place in the world that has changed. Messud smoothly changes the POV between the characters at different stages of their lives with deep and satisfying result.

It is curious that the last two books I have read developed from a seed in the authors' past. Each author had physical memories passed down to them, giving one the entire history of the family and the other snatches of memories in a shoebox delivered over two decades later.

I enjoyed these brilliant family sagas, Wolf at the Table by Adam Rapp and This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud. After reading these incredible novels, I thought that much of the literature I've read recently by older authors telling family stories might be a catalyst for creating a new genre: Aging Adult Fiction (alternative adjectives could include Old, Older, Personal Long History). I like the categorization, and I love the books. The first one for me was Elizabeth Strout, who wrote about fleeing New York with her ex-husband at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Lucy by the Sea. Then there was Ian McEwan in Lessons.

These literary giants wrote about what life looks like when viewed from the prism of what was on offer at the beginning of life and how things played out for all the familial characters. Rapp's large family in Elmira, New York, shook me to the core with hints of horrific events happening close to what seemed like a typical lower middle-class family with four sisters and two brothers. Myra, the oldest daughter, told the main POV chapters, followed by the mother and the brother. As time passed and children were born into this family, Ronin became my hero. Folks, this is not a gentle stroll down memory lane. But it was worth every minute I spent reading this brilliant novel.

On the other side of Aging Adult Fiction is the brilliant global journey Claire Messud creates with Gaston and Lucienne Cassar. The Cassars, deeply in love, find separation from each other painful as Gaston is in the French Navy and Lucienne is trying to parent her children in Algeria. The Cassar family story takes us worldwide, moving for almost a century. They become a family without an actual, natural home to comfort them. The family and their offspring make the best of each situation, but home is an elusive fantasy that will forever elude them. I felt particularly stirred by this story as it contains personal elements.

The heft of Wolf at the Table and This Strange Eventful History gave me so much to reflect on, consider, and learn from. I am in awe of these authors and their work.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of these books.

Wolf at the Table was published on March 19, 2024, by Little, Brown, and Company.


This Strange Eventful History will be published on May 14, 2024, by W. W. Norton & Company.
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An amazing family saga encompassing decades in the lives of close-knit yet far-flung family members who never quite get over losing their adopted Algerian homeland. Chock full of intimate history, 20th century politics, and family secrets, this is one to savor.