Passé sous nos pas

the long version

"Three women offer glimpses into fifty years in the life of a family brought together for twelve days by the death of one of its members. In short fragments and understated language, the novel offers insights into the moral and social climate of the last half of the twentieth century, as the narrators share their stories, telling of their coming of age, family secrets, fears, needs, hopes, tensions about race and sexuality, dreams and loves. The future, the present which is always tentative, the destiny that is never quite within reach, converge with the past. Each of the women has her own version, and each one weighs the possibilities and inaccuracies before her and behind her. The behaviours, events and perspectives are set out and left open for the reader to assess and understand in their complexity and their contexts. The scenes are strung together like samples of experience connected by a powerful and engaging sense of the immediate real."--Jacket.