The Age of Reason (Penguin Modern Classics)

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At 34, he’s anti-bourgeoisie, but this personal leaning receives a major blow at the start of the book. Delarue clearly has a thing for her, but is caught between being the intellectual elder statesman and the lust-driven buffoon. Boris had constructed his life on this basis, and he kept himself conscientiously free: indeed, he always challenged everyone, excepting Mathieu and Ivich: that would have been futile, for they were above criticism. Daniel Sereno is the extremely good looking gay friend of Mathieu, although they don’t appear to get on particularly well.

The first statement is true, because we may live in a country that considers itself free, but we may put ourselves in chains through the belief that we must behave in a certain way, and in behaving in that certain way we are chaining ourselves to society's traditions. Upon becoming pregnant, she’s clearly in two minds to keep the baby and comes to despise Delarue for wanting to rid it from her life.Existentialists may deny that such scenes are introduced for sensationalism's sake, but they have not explained why it is necessary to expound their doctrine solely from a worm's eye view of life. A philosophical, meandering novel, it includes some inspired ideas and episodes, but is rather middling fiction.

Put like that, maybe Sartre and his philosophy have disappeared because they have been so thoroughly subsumed into our modern attitude. But she is only the most extreme example of the quality all the characters share, Sartre’s own disgust and revulsion at life, of being alive, of being human.Realising the game is up, he finally levels with her (although, frankly, surely Ivich should have figured this out by now, which kind of indicates the self-indulgent frame of mind she’s often in).