A Life

A Life (1883), the first of Maupassant’s six completed novels, tells the story of Jeanne de Lamare, the only daughter of wealthy Norman aristocrats, from the day she leaves her convent school, heart and mind full of fond, excited hopes for the future, to the day almost twenty-nine years later when she becomes a grandmother in very changed circumstances. She who had thought that life would be perfect – with a handsome husband, two lovely children, and a fine chateau by the sea – discovers that reality is not at all like romantic fiction.
The story is set on the coast of Normandy, where the passage of the seasons and the vagaries of the weather play a central role in the unfolding of a life beset by treachery and disillusion, but a life redeemed from dreariness by the poignant beauty of Maupassant’s prose.