This book made me miserable. The extreme poverty, the filthy, neglected children who have been so isolated that they don’t know how to play like proper children, the greed and self-interest of the self-declared colony (cult) leader, the constant hunger of the Russian ladies who have nothing to cling to except their tattered clothes from the previous century, the bulging white eyes of the ancient landlady who is blind but sees all, the waves of sickness that wash over the young American as she tries desperately to induce an abortion, the child conceived on a drunken, forgotten night, the very detailed descriptions of the latrine behind the shop, the greenness, the stench, the fevers, endless glasses of cloudy Pernod …this is not the picturesque side of France. Kay Boyle’s writing is like nothing else I’ve ever read. This book is like one long, disturbing poem. ( )