SELECTED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AS ONE OF THE 50 BEST MEMOIRS OF THE
PAST 50 YEARS
"You begin this memoir thinking it will be about one thing, and it
turns into something else altogether--a book at once more ordinary and
more extraordinary than any first impressions might allow."--The New
York Times
"Moving...Carrère's prose is precise and measured...Through interviews
with friends and relatives of both families, he creates powerful
portraits that celebrate ordinary lives."--The New Yorker
Award-winning author Emmanuel Carrère's, Lives Other Than My Own is an
act of generous imagination that unflinchingly records devastating loss
and, equally vividly, the wealth of human solace that follows in its
wake.
In Sri Lanka, a tsunami sweeps a child out to sea, her grandfather
helpless against the onrushing water. In France, a young woman succumbs
to illness, leaving her husband and small children bereft. Present at
both events, Emmanuel Carrère sets out to tell the story of two
families--shattered and ultimately restored. What he accomplishes is
nothing short of a literary miracle: a heartrending narrative of endless
love, a meditation on courage and decency in the face of adversity, an
intimate and reverent look at the extraordinary beauty and nobility of
ordinary lives.
Precise, sober, and suspenseful, as full of twists and turns as any
novel, Lives Other Than My Own confronts terrifying catastrophes to
illuminate the astonishing richness of human connection: a grandfather
who thought he had found paradise--too soon--and now devotes himself to
helping his neighbors rebuild their village; a husband so in love with
his ailing wife that he carries her in his arms like a knight does his
princess; and finally, Carrère himself, longtime chronicler of the
tormented self, who unexpectedly finds consolation and even joy as he
immerses himself in the lives of others.
