A prominent French writer delves into his own history in this eloquent reflection on dysfunctional family relationships. Hervé Le Tellier did not consider himself to have been an unhappy child--he was not deprived, or beaten, or abused. And yet he understood from a young age that something was wrong, and longed to leave. Children sometimes have only the option of escaping, and owe to that escape their even greater love of life. Having reached a certain emotional distance at sixty years old, and with his father and stepfather dead and his mother suffering from late-stage Alzheimer's disease, Le Tellier finally felt able to write the story