This Strange Eventful History

“François knew that Paris was the heart of their glorious nation, though he’d never been there of course.”

The novel introduces François through the framework of colonial identity. Although French, he has never lived in France. He has spent the bulk of his life in the Mediterranean, although his years in Beirut didn’t render him Lebanese in anyone’s eyes. He struggles with the complexities of colonial identity for much of his life, never fully identifying with one nation or culture. This helps establish the theme of Displacement, Rootlessness, and Belonging.

“As the war’s chaos seeped into all life, communication across borders collapsed and no letters or even telegrams had come through.”

The novel is deeply grounded in history and depicts the impact of sweeping historical events like war on individuals and their families, foregrounding The Interplay Between Personal and Historical Narratives as a theme. Here, the text describes how the war cut off lines of communication. This detail is historically accurate, as is the widespread unease and worry that swept through European families whose members were, at the start of World War II, scattered across Europe’s various borders.

“From early May onward, Gaston had focused his dread and his distress on the fate of his family.”

This passage describes Gaston’s intense love for his family. Although a career-driven man with a strong work ethic and a desire to serve his country, Gaston prioritizes family above all else. As war looms in Europe, he fears primarily for his wife and children rather than for France and the other allied countries.

“With Mouret and Broussard he shared at least a language and a culture, but even to them he was foreign, he knew, a (mostly) white colonial African from that mysterious terrain across the Mediterranean.”

This passage helps characterize François and speaks to the novel’s interest in the complexities of colonial identity. Although not born in French, François is French by virtue of ethnicity and family history. However, to other Frenchmen whom he meets, his identity is more complex and informed by his status as a French colonial. He feels at times neither French enough to be French nor African enough to be African.

“Most of the Muslim kids were nationalists nowadays, and had the backing of the Algerian communist party.”

History plays an important role in the novel. Here, it describes the first rumblings of Algerian nationalism. The political protests and independence movement soon gained traction and ultimately resulted in Algeria throwing off its French colonial yoke. No longer having a foothold in the country, François and his family will be forced to flee. Although the author doesn’t grapple much with the history of French colonialism, the collapse of France’s colonial empire nonetheless reverberates throughout the novel.

“He’d need a job. He hated the work in insurance, and it seemed so promising then: not the gold rush, but the black gold rush.”

The history of Europe and North Africa in the wake of two world wars and the fall of colonialism remains an ever-present backdrop in the novel. Here, oil becomes a key industry in North Africa, and American European companies, robbed of their foothold in the region by a series of independence movements, rush to re-establish economic control in Algeria, Morocco, and beyond.

“Of course it was true that he didn’t have a home; it no longer existed, by which she understood he meant French Algeria, already in ’61 lost to them forever, though only this last summer, in July of ’62, did the country finally win its independence, the French and the harkis departing in a mass exodus.”

The search for home and identity in the wake of French colonialism’s collapse is at the heart of the novel’s plot and themes. The pieds-noirs were seen as not quite French but not Algerian either, and after Algeria achieved independence, many members of this community, including the fictional Cassar family, felt as though they had lost their place in the world. This sense of rootlessness pervades the text and shapes each character’s identity and life choices.

“The piggish Parisians thought, perhaps, that everyone in Algiers spoke only Arabic.”

This novel is historically accurate, and its depiction of the prejudice that the pieds-noirs were subjected to reflects how French Algerians were treated in France both before and after Algerian independence. Although colonialism was much harsher for the inhabitants of occupied countries, the novel engages with the struggles of the colonial French themselves. They felt out of place both in France and among indigenous Algerians and, especially after independence, never truly felt as if they belonged anywhere.

“After the generals’ coup in Algiers in March of ’58, it was painfully clear to Denise, at least, that there would never be a way back, no future in Algeria for herself or her family.”

The impact of historical events on ordinary lives is a central idea in the novel’s thematic exploration of The Interplay Between Personal and Historical Narratives. World War II, the Algerian war for independence, and other major events deeply affect the family. In this passage, Denise realizes that their home is no longer theirs: French Algeria, such as it was, has ceased to exist. Going forward, Denise will have to come to terms with not only the complexities of identifying as both French and Algerian but also the idea that as a white colonial in North Africa, her home might never have truly been “hers.”

“I do believe in God, if only secretly. I can’t tell if mummy or daddy do, and maybe I believe for all of us.”

Young Chloe speaks these lines. They help the author explore the complex role that religion plays in her characters’ lives. Catholicism is central to Gaston and Lucienne’s beliefs. Their commitment to religion helps connect them to the French part of their French Algerian identity. François’s generation isn’t as religious, and their lack of faith highlights the difficulty of maintaining cultural ties in diaspora: They’re even more removed from France than their parents are. Nonetheless, François’s young daughter, Chloe, expresses an interest in God, which shows that each new generation can find an ideological path back to its roots.

“There she stood, herself suspended at the midpoint in her life, between the older generation and the new, in service to them both.”

Careful and complex characterization helps Messud provide a window into her family history. She describes each figure in the text at multiple points in time, giving an idea of who they are and how their identity shifts as they age. Here, the novel reveals that Barbara is no longer a young girl at odds with her parents and newly in love with the exotic François but rather a middle-aged woman who does her best to focus on what she enjoys about her life, but she can’t help sometimes feeling confined by her responsibilities to her mother, to François and his parents, and to her children.

“In something like forty-two or forty-three hours from the takeoff in Sydney, heading backwards in time, they would arrive at their flat in Toulon, inshallah.”

This passage emphasizes the novel’s thematic interest in the connections among Displacement, Rootlessness, and Belonging through its description of how far-flung each generation is from the last: Although the family claims both French and Algerian roots, their home of French Algeria no longer exists. The older generation now lives in France, while the younger one lives in Australia. In addition, the passage reflects the complex nature of colonial identity: Gaston, this quote’s speaker, is a devout Catholic yet habitually uses “Inshallah,” the traditional Muslim saying that translates to “God willing.”

“She has asked for very little in this life. She submitted without complaint to many small humiliations, to always being the extra wheel, the single woman, the undesired.”

These lines describe Denise in middle age. Always a misfit, she never quite feels as though she belongs anywhere. Like the rest of the Cassars, she’s devoted to her family, but unlike her brother, she never had a family of her own and didn’t achieve career success. As a result, she often feels isolated.

“Chloe had obviously volunteered the accepted truism that the French presence in Algeria had been fundamentally wrong.”

Denise’s reflections speak to the ideological shifts that occur between successive generations of the Cassar family. Denise and (to some extent) François feel a kind of longing for their Algerian childhood and for their country, French Algeria, which no longer exists. By the time Chloe’s generation comes of age, colonialism is viewed through a different lens, and Chloe critiques the exploitive nature of French colonialism in North Africa and beyond.

“I wanted Oliver to both know and understand me, which was impossible without time in Toulon.”

Chloe’s thought illustrate her complex sense of French identity. Although raised outside of both France and Algeria and critical of French Algeria as a state, she feels a sense of being French Algerian and wants her boyfriend to see her within the context of her family and its Mediterranean roots.

“On Easter Sunday, the Soviets under Gorbachev held the round of their first free, or partly free, elections, and on the second round, on April 4th, Boris Yeltsin triumphed in Moscow.”

Although it focuses on a multigenerational history of one particular family, the novel is deeply interested in the impact of historical events on individuals and their communities. Here, Chloe describes raptly watching the fall of Communism around the Soviet sphere of influence on television. She derives a sense of hope and possibility from this major geopolitical change and in a way associates this spirit of democratic possibility with her own plans: She has decided to pursue a career in writing and feels that the future is entirely open to her.

“François sometimes felt that getting older was like living in a mansion you couldn’t afford, so that you were forced to shut down one room after another, eventually entire wings, until you huddled in the kitchen, breaking up the furniture for firewood.”

While interested in exploring the relationship between history and family, the novel also explores how family dynamics change over time. François and his family gradually fracture, and the anguish that he expresses in this passage reveals the vast gulf between him and his wife and children. Aging is difficult for François because, having given up the life he wanted for his family, he feels that he loses them. This metaphor speaks to the way he experiences getting older and the sense of isolation it brings.

“The suitcase or the coffin.”

François recalls this expression from the French Algerian community. It reflects the nomadic life of the pieds-noirs after Algerian independence. They had to either keep moving or remain where they were to wait out the end of their lives. Never again would they feel as though they had a true home anywhere.

“It felt very not-American, very not-Protestant, for us to walk and play and eat and chatter within a few feet of this effigy, this decaying immobilized reduction of what he’d been, the core and center of us all.”

Barbara’s antipathy toward what she perceives as her husband’s foreignness runs through entire the novel. A distinct cultural divide separates her from the family she marries into. This divide reflects the isolation that French Algerian families felt in the wake of colonialism’s collapse: In a sense, the Cassar family is foreign to everyone they encounter except one another. They often feel as though they belong nowhere and are comprehensible to no one.

“With the older generation, I could never quite grasp the shifting allegiances.”

Many shared values and beliefs bind the family together, though the novel also explores the intergenerational differences that slowly begin to separate them. Here, Chloe marvels at her mother’s newfound loyalty to Denise and doesn’t understand what shift happened to cause this. She too, however, is defined in part by the how she confounds and confuses the older generation. Identity is complex and fluid in her world, and the way each generation defines itself both alongside and against each other is one of the novel’s more nuanced explorations of family.

“We’d lived many places and belonged nowhere except with our grandparents in Toronto and Toulon.”

This passage reveals how Chloe interprets her family history and her own sense of rootlessness. Her search for belonging ultimately ends with people rather than a particular place. She associates “home” with Toronto and Toulon because her grandparents are there. Born into a nomadic family, Chloe finds home within the space of family itself.

“Not for nothing had his parents put Saint Christopher, patron saint of travelers, around his infant neck. Not for nothing had they named him François, François the Frenchman, the free. They had wanted so much for him.”

This passage is rich with symbolism. The Saint Christopher medallion symbolizes the Cassar family’s nomadic history. The name François symbolizes his connection to France, even though he was born in French Algeria and would never truly call France home. The entire family, but François in particular, is defined by wandering, travel, and the desire to remain connected to France, a country that each successive generation will feel further and further away from.

“This strange eventful history that made a life, not good or bad, rather both good and bad.”

This line contains the novel’s title and directly references the Shakespeare soliloquy from which it was taken, which appears in As You Like It. Additionally, it reinforces the novel’s interest in family and familial relationships. Many of the relationships the text depicts are strained: François and Barbara are just one example. However, at the end of her life, Barbara observes that relationships are complex and contain both good and bad elements. This is an important moment of reflection for her and helps her to understand and interpret the role that family has played in her life.