For fans of Rachel Cusk, Crossed Lines is a critique of a woman's midlife, middle-class crisis of conscience, told through the astute and clever voice of one of France's most prolific writers. Translated by Penny Hueston.
When her mother offers Rose a Mediterranean cruise with her two children, she jumps at the chance to get away from her husband who drinks too much, and the renovations of their holiday house in the south. But one night the cruise ship comes upon a shipwrecked boat full of refugees, who are taken aboard. Without telling her teenage son, Rose gives his mobile phone to a young Nigerian refugee. Does she want to be some kind of a hero, ease her conscience? Now what is she in for? The secret phone connection takes Rose and her family on a journey of discovery.
With her trademark wit and acid intelligence, Marie Darrieussecq, like Rachel Cusk or Jenny Offill, shines a light on issues of individual responsibility in our complex world.
About the Author
Marie Darrieussecq is a French writer born in Bayonne in 1969. Her first novel, Pig Tales, was published in 1996 and translated into thirty-five languages. She has written more than twenty books.
In 2013 she was awarded both the Prix Medicis and the Prix des Prix for her novel Men. She lives in Paris.
Industry Reviews
'Darrieussecq has a force of clarity, an ability to take herself seriously without the need for self-deprecation. She is always original, always thrilling.'
* Australian *
'Vintage Darrieussecq: tender, disturbing and indelible.'
* Chloe Hooper on The Baby *
'There are few writers who may have changed my perception of the world, but Darrieussecq is one of them.'
* The Times *
'Darrieussecq writes with a kind of truncated brevity that is stark, muscular and direct. The effect is immediately arresting.'
* Overland on Our Life in the Forest *
'A moving, humane, often funny novel about instances of heroism that can save a life...Darrieuessecq champions an ordinary, powerless individual, who proves herself nonetheless capable, now and again, of doing good things that, without saving the world, can reduce the suffering of another individual. What would we have done if we were Rose? Or rather: what are we doing?'
* Les Inrockuptibles *
'No other author writes about being a mother as intensely and as precisely as Marie Darrieussecq...This is the story of a woman asking herself how she can be in some way honourable in the face of the world's absurdity...Written with compassion and humour, and with no moral other than that of giving meaning to one's existence.'
* Elle *
