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One of the most beautiful and optimistic books I have ever read, The Life Before Us is a masterpiece. Romain Gary wrote it under a pseudonym, Emile Ajar, and thus became to only person to win the French Goncourt Prize twice. In fact, it was only after his tragic death that the identity of the mysterious but astounding write Ajar was revealed to by Romain Gary.

The story is told by Momo, an infant of prostitution in an illegal boarding house run by the aging Madame Rosa, well past her prime but who still "defended herself" from time to time. Momo lives with other children of prostitutes and is a fount of wisdom and consciousness that - despite his hilarious vocabulary of words used in the wrong sense but which reveal even more about his sensibility - surprises and amuses us at every turn of the page:

"The first thing I can tell you is that we lived on the 6th floor without an elevator and for Madame Rosa with all those pounds she carried on only two legs, it was a real source of daily life, with all its worried and pains." (p.1)

"i believe that the injust sleep the best because they don't give a shit, while the righteous cannot close their eyes and feel guilty about everything." (p. 39)

"'It is not necessary to have reasons to be scared, Momo'
That is something I never forgot because it is the truest thing i ever heard." (p.63)

"I think that to live, you need to start young, because later you lose all your value and nobody will give you a break." (p.88)

"I was so happy that I wanted to die because you must seize happiness when it is there before you" (p. 96)

I could not possibly render justice to the story of Momo and Madame Rosa with Momo's friends Monsieur Hamil and his book of Victor Hugo (which in his dementia he confuses with the Qu'ran), Madame Lolo (the Senegalese ex-boxer transvestite who works the Bois de Boulogne) or the wonderful Nadine...I encourage you - particularly in this dark moment for world politics at the eve of the Drumpftastrophe- to take refuge with Momo and Madame Rosa. Like Momo says in closing the book, "We must love."


(All translations are mine from the Folio Classics edition in the original French)