Maylis Besserie does not lack for daring. Her novel is a fictional account of the last months of Samuel Beckett’s life, which he spent in a Paris nursing home, Résidence Tiers Temps. As she says in an author’s note, the book “reconstructs a version of Beckett from real and imaginary facts, as if he were a character at the end of his life, like those who inhabit his own work”.
To set out to portray a master stylist, the author of Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable, would daunt the most experienced writer. That this is Besserie’s debut, the first part of a projected “Irish trilogy”, is remarkable; that she carries it off so convincingly, with such elan and poetic force, is a wonder.
