Good Intentions - Softcover

Desarthe, Agn�s

3.17

69 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007100930 ISBN 13: 9780007100934

Publisher: Flamingo, 2002

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A sly, wry novel about how hard it is to do good.

Sonia is finally settling down. With her husband Julien, she buys a flat in an apartment block in an up-and-coming quarter of the city. And she is pregnant with their first child. Family life begins and it feels good.

Their new home has its problems, as all do. With Julien away on business much of the time, and now a second child on the way, Sonia finds herself drawn into the darker corners of life in her block. A disoriented widower, seemingly incapable of going on alone, latches onto her, all under the watchful gaze of the building's eyes and ears – a dishevelled, even disgusting pair who in turn lean on the services of an obliging factotum. They fascinate and repulse Sonia all at once, but, in her muddled, well-meaning way, she finds herself sucked speedily into the maelstrom of their sordid lethargy and ordinary cruelty. It's as much as she can do to try to bring relief where she can, but it comes at quite a price. And Sonia has her reader ask why it is so very hard to tell the truth and so very hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

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Review:

Good Intentions is French author Agnes Desarthe’s second novel to be translated into English following the critical success in the UK of Five Photos of My Wife. Like its predecessor it is a concise, elegant dissection of the anxieties of daily life, which opens benignly enough by introducing us to a young couple, Sonia and Julien, who have recently moved into a seemingly unexceptional block of flats in Paris. However, what begins as a wry ensemble piece about the various eccentric inhabitants of the apartment block mutates into something far more disturbing. Sonia befriends an old man, Monsieur Dupotier who, following the death of his wife, becomes increasingly dependent on Simone, the caretaker, and her sadistic brother, Simono. Initially Sonia is repulsed by the filth of Monsieur Dupotier’s neglected apartment; however, as she learns of Simone and Simono’s bullying of the old man she embarks on a bitter battle with the police and social services to secure more humane treatment for Monsieur Dupotier.

Hugely controversial in its native country, Good Intentions paints a bleak picture of a Paris that is divided by the seemingly insuperable fault lines of race, class and poverty. Sonia, a Jew, feels constantly threatened by the latent anti-Semitism that threatens to boil over in her arguments with Simono. And yet, as a middle-class professional, she too is guilty of displaying distaste for the habits of her poorer, less well-educated neighbours. The novel isn’t intended to be an angry polemic about the state of the nation though; rather it is an examination of how one individual tries to respond to this cycle of ignorance and suspicion. Inevitably Desarthe asks more questions than she answers but she nevertheless succeeds in carving out a trenchant and often wickedly funny portrayal of the vicissitudes of urban living. --Jane Morris

Review:

‘Desarthe’s fourth novel is as sly and as subtle and as engrossing as her most recent, “Five Photos of My Wife”. But it does more than entertain and provoke, it speaks volumes about attitudes both private and public...intelligent, honest and unsettling.’ Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times

‘Desarthe deftly and mercilesly uses Sonia’s ordinary desires and concerns to pave an elegant road to hell.’ Alice Ferrebe, Scotland on Sunday

‘Desarthe has a style...which is consistently beautiful.’ Alan Gorham, Aberdeen Press & Journal

from the French reviews for Good Intentions:

‘Sonia's 'good intentions' are taking her straight to hell... Desarthe's previous novels have already shown how much her merry sadness recalls Isaac Bashevis Singer or Chagall. Here again, her down-to-earth realism is mixed with something of the supernatural." Le Monde

‘Behind her deft wit, her more serious aspect, there between the lines, just visible, suddenly there is a terrifying drop.’ Le Journal du Dimanche

‘Delicate in aspect and resolute in profile, Agn�s Desarthe draws herself up, all at once as timorous and reckless as a cat, on the threshold of every possibility, all antennae bristling. A lot cat and a little bit witch, Desarthe then slips soundlessly inside the heads of other people, to divine their innermost anxieties, both great and small.’ Magazine Litt�raire

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