All My Friends

Following her universally acclaimed novel Three Strong Women, French phenom Marie NDiaye returns with five intricately narrated stories showcasing characters both robustly real and emotionally unfathomable. All My Friends opens with the fraught story of a patriarch who is losing his grip on reality, even as he falls deeply in love with his former student, now his housekeeper. NDiaye further probes the enduring effects of past tragedies in 'The Death of Claude Francois,' a striking dissection of the tug-of-war between a doctor and her impoverished patient over a dead husband. Later, NDiaye gives us the harsh tale of a young boy longing to escape his life of poverty by becoming a sex slave - just like the beautiful young man that lived next door. The curt, Kafkaesque 'Revelation' involves a woman who takes her mentally challenged son on a bus ride to the city: they both know that she'll return, but he won't. And in the claustrophobic, psychologically dense 'Brulard's Day,' NDiaye sweeps in and out of the confused, aggressive mind of a woman tottering between sanity and madness. Chilling, provocative, and touching, All My Friends shows a master stylist using her unique gifts to render the personal horrors we fight every day to suppress - but in All My Friends they're allowed to roam free.