Claude is a former gym teacher who is battling cancer and losing. He lives in a low-income neighborhood with his wife, Simone. There has been rioting in their neighborhood with the constant sound of police sirens. There isn’t much calm inside their home either as they each in their own way try to adjust to the end of Claude’s days. It’s just the two of them until a young boy comes for a visit and throws everything into even more discord.

The author doesn’t flinch at describing the horrors of a death from cancer. That and the effects of his decline on those around him make for a very disturbing read. But as in her book “Autopsy of a Father”, Ms. Kramer writes in such a poetical manner that her books are beautiful to read despite the subject matter. This is an in depth look at the end of a marriage as a result of death that I know will stay with me for some time to come. It’s a short book, only about 150 pages, and I hope to read it again one day, not so much as to know what happens in the book as I already know that but just to enjoy the writing again.

Recommended. ( )

Claude brings out the worst in those around him.

Glad book was short. Hard to read about all this family's misery, anger and unhappiness. ( )

Pascale Kramer's THE CHILD, while beautifully written, is in many ways excruciatingly painful to read. This is primarily because Kramer describes in such detail the devastating effects of the final stages of the metastasized lung cancer afflicting Claude, one of the main characters. We watch him struggle with numb extremities swollen by edema, debilitating diarrhea and nausea from chemo treatments, loss of body mass, muscle and hair. Kramer spares her readers none of the cancer-caused indignities. And Claude's wife, Simone, bears the brunt of witnessing his suffering and decline. Their marriage has never been strong, so Simone is also wracked with guilt about her not quite stifled wish that he would just die. Add to this stew of suffering an eleven year-old boy, Gael, Claude's illegitimate son from a short-lived affair, who comes to live with them for a week, while there is rioting in the streets nearby in the once sedate suburb now surrounded by apartment blocks filled with recent refugees and immigrants. Add another estranged adult son from Claude's first marriage who is guilt-ridden and horrified at his father's rapid decline. The truth is neither the father nor the child (fat, spoiled, conniving) are very likeable people. Only Simone seems a sympathetic character in this motley bunch. There are back stories, of course, and a mix of personal and public events, giving the story political and social significance in its dark portrayal of modern France. The sheer sadness and desperate dreariness of the story, however, make it easy to put down and something of a slog to read. Kramer is a good writer, but her story here is so unhappy I was glad to reach the end of it.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )

If it's true as Shakespeare wrote that "A sad tale's best for winter," then now is the time to be reading Pascale Kramer's novel, The Child. The first-person narrative follows Simone whose husband, Claude, is dying of cancer. A love-child Claude had fathered eleven years earlier enters their life--first for a meeting and later to stay with them--and the tensions that arise from the presence of the boy, Gael, is the substance of the novel.

There is no hint in The Child of rising above the difficulties of life or even hopefulness. Kramer has painted a world and a family that is so sick that even dissolution doesn't seem to be an escape. In a book where both the present and the past are torments, the future holds little promise. ( )

In reading this slim novel by Pascale Kramer, I was frequently reminded of Plato's cave. I had expected an intimate portrayal of a family's peculiar workings in the face of disease and unease. Instead I felt as though I was only watching the shadows of people upon a wall -- thin and unlikeable archetypes rather than fully-drawn and unique characters. I read as they went though varying pathetic and selfish and pained motions, but it seemed so removed that I was mostly uninterested. There was really no arc to the story -- it began and ended in pretty much the same place which can make a reader feel like he's wasted his time. I think there is a good story somewhere in this book, and I think there is life to be found in these characters. But this effort to root them out is too brief and detached to be successful.