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Book Summary and Reviews of This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud

This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud

This Strange Eventful History

A Novel

by Claire Messud

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  • Published:
  • May 2024, 448 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history, from one of our finest contemporary novelists.

Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state―separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family's strangeness; of François's union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.

Inspired in part by long-ago stories from her own family's history, Claire Messud animates her characters' rich interior lives amid the social and political upheaval of the recent past. As profoundly intimate as it is expansive, This Strange Eventful History is "a tour de force…one of those rare novels that a reader doesn't merely read but lives through with the characters" (Yiyun Li).

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"In her characteristically artful prose, Messud burrows inside the hearts and minds of her key players, bringing to their struggles and self-deceptions a deep-veined empathy made even more remarkable by how close she is to the story. This is a wonder." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Messud paints compelling portraits of internal conflicts and tangled relationships, dropping along the way tantalizing references to crucial events that will be clarified later, in a rich narrative that defies summary...Brilliant and heart-wrenching; Messud is one of contemporary literature's best." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Deeply intertwined with the sociopolitical upheaval of the 20th century, and inspired by Messud's own family history, this sweeping narrative is as intimate as it is profound." ―Oprah Daily

"This Strange Eventful History relates the story of the Cassars, a family of French Algerian origin who were displaced after World War II and Algerian independence. Author of The Emperor's Children, The Woman Upstairs and The Burning Girl, Claire Messud crafts complex characters and builds tension by exploring the intensity of their emotions. This family saga has the added intrigue of being inspired in part by a family memoir written by Messud's grandfather." ―BookPage

"There are few genres more enjoyable than the sprawling, decade-spanning family saga (especially in the hands of a brilliant novelist). Claire Messud's latest novel tells the story of an Algerian-born French family from 1940 through 2010 as they navigate personal and political upheaval…Sold." ―Literary Hub

"It's almost unbearably moving, wise and full of the most gorgeous prose." ―The Guardian (UK)

"A choral mural of sweep and scope that knows just when to render the historical personal, Claire Messud's epic is above all a wise, wary, yet love-struck chronicle of how the selves we strive to make become 'colonized' by family." ―Joshua Cohen, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Netanyahus

"This Strange Eventful History is an astonishment―rich and luminous, dense with life, wide with wisdom. Messud's view of the Cassar family―and we suspect as we read it, her own―is as emotionally precise and imaginatively capacious as her rendering of the history that shapes their fortunes. Rarely has the private magic of familial love been so fully realized in a public act of literature. Just exquisite." ―Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies, a New York Times Top Ten book

"What an extraordinary experience This Strange Eventful History gives to readers. It takes them on artful and masterfully orchestrated grand tours: of the world as it spins toward and away from World War II into nearly our own time, of three generations of the Cassar family as it concentrates and disperses and arrays itself across the spinning world, of the individual family members as they each experience in their own indelible ways how history enfolds and excludes us, how time―implacable and indecipherable―befalls us, and how love may possibly be the only true human masterpiece, elusive as it so often and tragically proves to be. Claire Messud captures the heartbreaking paradoxes of being in our world and in ourselves yet feeling separated from both with a precision and acuity like no other writer I know." ―Paul Harding, author of the Booker Prize Finalist This Other Eden

"A tour de force, This Strange Eventful History is one of those rare novels which a reader doesn't merely read but lives through with the characters. Call it the War and Peace of the 20th and 21st century; call it The Long View of a family migrating through many borders, worlds, and eras; call it anything and we fall short. Claire Messud is a magnificent storyteller, and the novel, an all-encompassing history of many human hearts and any human heart, will linger and haunt us as the best and the most heartbreaking memory." ―Yiyun Li, author of the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning The Book of Goose

This information about This Strange Eventful History was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Margaret K. (Seekonk, MA)

This Strange Eventful History
This novel, while loosely based on her own family history, is fiction, but through her beautiful, simple writing Claire Messud conveys the universality of family life, indeed of all of human experience. I was drawn to read this book because of its initial placement in Algeria and the tortured history of France with this North African country but her masterfully developed characters travel the world in the course of their lives and the generations unfold in such touching ways -- interdependent but unique in their joys and sorrows. An excellent, very readable book. Perfect for book clubs -- it has many different ways to understand/interpret the story and its rich family, which one comes to love as one revisits one's own life. A masterpiece!

Lynn D. (Kingston, NY)

This Strange Eventful History
I loved this book! This novel tells the story of 3 generations of a French-Algerian family displaced in the 1940's and 1950's by events of history and the effects this has on the family as they make temporary homes in different parts of the world. The author writes beautifully and with great compassion for these characters as they experience love, success, disappointments, and losses in their lives. The book explores the idea of 'home', and 'family' and loyalty, as central to how we know who we are. Highly recommend and lots for book clubs to discuss!

Eileen C. (New York, NY)

Evocative and poignant
In this beautifully written multigenerational saga--covering the years from 1940 to 2010--Claire Messud uses multiple viewpoints to explore how various social and political forces shape the lives of a family--based on her own family--and how the stories we tell ourselves influence how we interpret the world. It is a novel full of empathy, but it is also a heartbreaking novel about how isolated we are from each other, and how little we really know about how the world feels to others, including those we love the most in the world. It is not a quick read, but it does an extraordinary job of illuminating the importance of family and connection.

Deborah W. (Boynton Beach, FL)

Around the World in Three Generations
In a novel that spans three generations, the Cassar family lands in Algeria, France, Buenos Aires, the United States, and Canada (and that's a shortened list). So where is "home?" What country is yours? In the end, the characters learn that "home was a matter not of geography but family" and "family was all that ultimately mattered." And what a family it is. We are drawn to all of them as they move around the world and through the decades starting with World War II, the young couple who are grandparents by the end, their two children who we watch grow up, and then the two granddaughters. This beautifully written book immerses us in vivid descriptions of numerous locations, examples of how we're all affected by the times we live in, and finely attuned analyses of these characters' inner lives; we're sorry to see it end. Readers will find much to connect to and enjoy in this tale.

Julie Z. (Oak Park, IL)

This Strange Eventful History
How I loved being immersed in the world to which Claire Messud introduces us in This Strange Eventful History! This novel is a generational family saga, set across many countries, and told through the lens of Lucienne and Gaston Cassar and their children. The couple is French-Algerian, and after WW II, spend the beginning of the novel moving across the globe searching for a homeland. They share a very special love. Their children, and then grandchildren, have much to live up to in their own relationships, it seeming close to impossible to recreate what their parents have.
Messud writes with elegance and finesse, making the reader want to linger in these pages. This semi-autobiographical story of her own family is the most fully realized of the books I have read of hers - not to diminish her wonderful back-list. Strongly recommended.

Dorothy H. (Folsom, CA)

3 Generation Family Story
Saga begins before WW@ in Algeria. Family journeys to South America, Canada and US. Along the way we learn of their happy and sad times in the face of history. One can relate to older generation trying to influence the younger ones. Author describes emotions of the family at their different ages along the way to the passing of 2 generations.
Will be a great book club read.

...16 more reader reviews

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Author Information

Claire Messud Author Biography

Photo by Lucian Wood

Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction. A recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she teaches at Harvard University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Author Interview

Other books by Claire Messud at BookBrowse
  • The Woman Upstairs jacket
  • The Emperor's Children jacket

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