L.C. is an exceptional first novel. Inventive, daring and superbly constructed, it is a remarkable evocation of a nineteenth-century Frenchwoman's life as perceived by three generations of women. At its heart is the diary of L. C., Lucienne Crozier, a haunting personal record of her arranged and stultifying marriage, her introduction to the Paris of art and politics, her affairs with Romantic painter Eugene Delacroix and revolutionary Jean de la Tour, and her move towards a radical socialism and feminism in the tumultuous months before the 1848 revolution. After the uprising Lucienne fled to Algiers with Jean, then disappeared without trace, her short life obliterated but for the testimony of her diary. When discovered some 120 years later, the task of translation is taken up first by Willa Rehnfield, a reclusive American with a predetermined view of Lucienne's legacy, then, after her death, by Jane Amme, a fugitive from the campus riots of Berkeley 1968. For each the diary is a repository for her own truth, the means by which each makes sense of the world as she finds it. Susan Daitch's stunning novel raises intriguing questions about the recording of history itself.

Novel Fiction Historic France Nineteenth-century