Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the Bard Fiction Prize A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the YearAn Electric Review Best Book of the YearA ReadySteadyBook Best Book of the Year It's 1999 and Emile Poulquet awaits sentencing in a Paris court for deporting thousands to almost certain death during World War II. But, haunted by ghosts from his former life, and determined to confront his dark legacy, he escapes and heads toward his beloved Finier, a rural town in the south of France where he once served as prefect. His return will have explosive consequences. By turns reflective and slyly humorous,
Crawl Space poignantly describes one man's tragic attempt to come to terms with the past.
Edie Meidav is the author of
The Far Field:
A Novel of Ceylon. Winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman, she teaches at the New College of California and is currently in residence at Bard College.
A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year It's 1999 and Emile Poulquet awaits sentencing in a Paris court for deporting thousands to almost certain death during World War II. But haunted by ghosts from his past, and determined to confront his dark legacy, he escapes and heads toward his beloved Finier, a rural town in the south of France where he once served as prefect. His return will have explosive consequences.
In Finier, Poulquet finds shelter within the strange embrace of a group of teenage wastrels, and encounters new breeds of idealism, degeneracy, and friendship. He sets out to find Ariannea lifelong obsession and the widow of a Resistance heroin order to hand her his last will and testament. But as he begins his quest, he cannot help being drawn, inexorably, toward another circle of refugees and reporters in town for a wartime reunion. He doesn't yet know that his worst betrayaland the greatest test of his own ability to pardon anotheris yet to come.
By turns epic and intimate, reflective and slyly humorous, Crawl Space limns the gray zone between past and future. Edie Meidav poignantly describes one man's tragic attempt to come to terms with the past. "Meidav's seriousness and energy demand . . . that we hold her novel to the highest standards."Sam Munson, The New York Times Book Review "In her energy as a writer, Meidav floats so many issues, throws so many balls in the air, that she runs the risk of anti-climax. Can the final meeting with Arianne, for example, carry the weight Poulquet puts on it as he travels toward it? Some novelists have the capacity, the narrative goodwill and the generosity to override and allay such readerly qualms. In this accomplished novel, Meidav shows herself to be one of that happy company."Thomas Keneally, The Washington Post "In her remarkable second novel, Edie Meidav revisits the French occupation and distills it into a heart-chilling tale of love and hate."Thomas Meaney, Los Angeles Times "Meidav's novel demonstrates her considerable gifts as a stylist; there's not a false note in the prose, and those who relish fine writing, as well as anyone interested in European history, will find much to admire in Crawl Space."Timothy Peters, San Francisco Chronicle "In her new novel, Edie Meidav has created a vivid panorama of the modern world, refracted through an amazingly intricate character. The secrets of history, the unrequited loves and betrayals, the disgraces and disappointments and confusionsall are revived for Emile Poulquet, who, in trying to escape his past, runs headlong into the trap of memory and guilt. Crawl Space is the work of a fearless writer with a cosmic imagination."Joanna Scott "Powerful . . . An ambitious and distinguished first novel."Chitra Divakaruni, Los Angeles Times "A richly detailed and lyrical epic . . . Despite its imaginative scope and intellectual heft, the book moves as rapidly as a thriller."Adriana Leshko, Harper's Bazaar "It's rare to find an embodiment of the proverbial quest for authenticity as perfectly realized as it is in . . . Edie's Meidav's rich, roiling first novel."Melanie Rehak, Newsday "Sophisticated . . . Capacious and a good deal of fun."Emily Barton, San Francisco Chronicle "Emile Poulquet, age 84, a former official of France's World War II Vichy regime, condemned thousands of fellow citizens to death camps. After decades of hiding and several plastic surgeries, he is apprehended and tried but not convicted for lack of anyone who could identify him. After escaping from the Paris prison in which he might be taken for a new trial, Poulquet returns to the scene of his crimes, a town in southern France. This quintessential French bureaucrat spends the rest of the novel rationalizing his conduct while tracking down past acquaintances. Meeting up with a band of teenage 'wastrels' who offer shelter and companionship, he little suspects that he faces the biggest betrayal of all. Meidav skillfully exposes the criminal mind that refuses to accept responsibility for its acts and instead blames the victim. A highly impressive and original treatment of the Holocaust."Edward Cone, Library Journal "Meidav embeds the reader in the mind of a narcissistic, self-loathing, obsessive, vengeful narratora French Nazi collaborator-whose oddly compelling voice is the achievement of this complex novel. As prefect of the small town of Finier during WWII, Emile Poulquet zealously helped the Nazis compile lists of Jews for deportation to concentration camps. In 1999, at the age of 84 and after decades as a fugitive, Poulquet eludes conviction in a Paris trialthe intervening years and reconstructive facial surgery make him unidentifiable by witnesses. He then returns to Finier to exact revenge on the object of his obsession, Arianne Fauret, a resistance widow whom he considers a lifelong tormentor. His mad scheme is to make Ariannewho now directs a foundation to reclaim war memorythe executor of his last will and testament, thereby forcing her to accept his version of personal and historical events. Meidav's narrative jumps from Poulquet's wartime years to the more convoluted story of his modern-day return to Finier, when he falls in with a band of misfit teenage squatters, and events come to a head around a wartime memorial event. With a tale both chilling and comical, Meidav considers the struggle to define history."Publishers Weekly
Review
"[Meidav's] portrait of Poulquet is chilling in its understatement. . . . Meidav sounds the notes of detachment and desperation in Poulquet's voice with unflinching exactness. . . . Meidav's seriousness and energy demand nonetheless that we hold her novel to the highest standards."--
The New York Times Book Review
"[A] finely crafted, seriocomic tale . . . An ambitious book in the tradition of the European novel of ideas, addressing the failure of memory, the ineluctability of fate, and the age-old issues of guilt and redemption . . . [Narrator Poulquet is] charming, a literate raconteur. . . . Meidav's novel is a reminder of the power of the culture to shape morality [and] demonstrates her considerable gifts as a stylist; there's not a false note in the prose."--San Francisco Chronicle
"A vivid panorama of the modern world, refracted through an amazingly intricate character. The secrets of history, the unrequited loves and betrayals, the disgraces and disappointments and confusions--all are revived for Emile Poulquet, who, in trying to escape his past, runs headlong into the trap of memory and guilt. Crawl Space is the work of a fearless writer with a cosmic imagination."--Joanna Scott
"Lyrical."--The East Bay Express ("Please Please Read These" selection)
"A heart-chilling tale of love and hate . . . Meidav's novel illuminates . . . with all the brilliant Technicolor that well-honed fiction has to offer."--Los Angeles Times "Poulquet is, he says, 'one more unjew jewed by history.' Such a fellow should not be good company for the substantial pilgrimage we undertake with him in Edie Meidav's troubling new novel, Crawl Space. But he is quite a creation indeed, this aging anti-Quixote with his residual windmills to tilt at. . . . It might have been tempting for a novelist to show Poulquet crumbling with guilt, self-accusation, and awareness; the quality of his whimsical hauteur is not the least of Meidav's triumphs as a storyteller."--Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's List
"Meidav's style is subtle and sophisticated, resembling that of Marcel Proust."--J. (the Jewish news weekly of Northern California)
"Edie Meidav's brave novel about an aged French Nazi who has slipped between the cracks of the legal system, and, with unreconstructed prejudices, seeks shelter in his hometown now."--Robert Kelly, author of Lapis
"Unfailingly interesting."--San Francisco magazine
"Meidav has the ability to tackle the huge, unanswerable questions of history with breathtaking skill and daring. She goes deep into The Other and brings into focus the complex interrelations among beauty, cruelty, sympathy, and brutality. The profundity of her moral and philosophical probing is matched by the strikingness of her imagery and the lyricism of her prose. She surveys the most reprehensible moral landscape and elicits from her reader, in that miraculous act of grace that only fiction can provide, a sympathy, as well as a repugnance for that very sympathy. A masterful manipulator, she milks every nuance of vulnerability and shamelessness, delusion and contrition. Like Penelope weaving and unweaving her tapestry, Meidav heals and rips apart the wounds of history nearly simultaneously. She forces us to interrogate the very nature of memory. Her vision is vast, global, uncompromising, risk taking. Thus it is no surprise that her brilliant career is fast evolving."--Mary Caponegro
"An original, new novel about the Holocaust . . . A provocative and compelling second novel."--Jewish Woman magazine
"Meidav embeds the reader in the mind of a narcissistic, self-loathing, obsessive, vengeful narrator, a French Nazi collaborator, whose oddly compelling voice is the achievement of this complex novel (after The Far Field). . . . With a tale both chilling and comical, Meidav considers the struggle to define history."--Publishers Weekly
"A deep character study of an octogenarian who knows that even death will not eliminate the guilt that haunts him. His need to 'go home' grips readers. . . . Meidav does the impossible."--Midwest Book Review
Synopsis
Winner of the Bard Fiction Prize
A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year
An Electric Review Best Book of the Year
A ReadySteadyBook Best Book of the Year
It's 1999 and Emile Poulquet awaits sentencing in a Paris court for deporting thousands to almost certain death during World War II. But, haunted by ghosts from his former life, and determined to confront his dark legacy, he escapes and heads toward his beloved Finier, a rural town in the south of France where he once served as prefect. His return will have explosive consequences.
By turns reflective and slyly humorous, Crawl Space poignantly describes one man's tragic attempt to come to terms with the past.
Synopsis
Winner of the Bard Fiction Prize A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the YearAn Electric Review Best Book of the YearA ReadySteadyBook Best Book of the Year It's 1999 and Emile Poulquet awaits sentencing in a Paris court for deporting thousands to almost certain death during World War II. But, haunted by ghosts from his former life, and determined to confront his dark legacy, he escapes and heads toward his beloved Finier, a rural town in the south of France where he once served as prefect. His return will have explosive consequences. By turns reflective and slyly humorous, Crawl Space poignantly describes one man's tragic attempt to come to terms with the past.
About the Author
Edie Meidav is the author of The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon. Winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman, she teaches at the New College of California and is currently in residence at Bard College.