Sasha returns to Paris as an unhappy older woman. She drinks to remember and she drinks to forget. When she drinks she cries. She meets some Russians and buys a painting; she meets a young man whom she thinks is a gigolo, but whom perhaps at the end of the book she read wrong, and at the very end she takes some comfort from her hotel room neighbour whom she has always hated.
We are right inside Sasha's head and hear her every thought even as she speaks to the people she meets. That took a bit of getting used to, and many times I wanted to shake her, but that's a good thing.
I recently wrote a post on bleak books, and if I'd written it a day or two later this would have been on it. Bleak but wonderful. Poor Sasha.
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