Waiting for Tomorrow

February 5, 2018
In Appanah’s rewarding follow-up to The Last Brother, Adam, a painter and aspiring architect from provincial France, is talked into attending a New Year’s Eve party in Paris, where he feels hopelessly out of place. He takes refuge in a pile of coats on the couch; only Anita, a Mauritian-French girl who feels similarly lonesome, has gotten there first. Of course, they fall in love, delighting in their differences and shared creative dreams. After marriage, pregnancy, and the death of Anita’s father, they decide to move to the region where Adam grew up. While Adam settles back in quickly, Anita flounders in a small town where her difference is noticeable and her education is considered unfavorable and untrustworthy by the locals. The strongest sections of the book belong to Adèle, their nanny. Adèle came to France from Mauritius, where she laid to rest the pain of her past life. She and Anita meet by chance, and soon Adèle is hired to care for Adam and Anita’s daughter. Anita and Adam find themselves separately intrigued by Adèle’s stoicism and her story. The novel begins and ends with Adèle’s death, but the true tragedy, Appanah implies, is the inherent imbalance that exists in any relationship and how easily it is exploited. Though there is a concision to Appanah’s language—or perhaps the translation—that holds the reader at an arm’s distance, the characters are complicated and well-drawn and the story immersive.

February 1, 2018
A married couple find themselves entranced by their new nanny.Adam and Anita have been married for years. They have a young daughter, a house in the French provinces, and, despite a few discontents, a stable home life. Twenty years ago, Adam was an aspiring artist, Anita an aspiring writer, an immigrant from the island of Mauritius, and they lived in Paris, and life was glamorous. Now, having returned to the provinces where Adam grew up, the glamour has faded. Adam does something boring and stable for a living; Anita serves as a stringer for the local paper. Then they hire Adele, another Mauritian, to care for their daughter and help out at home. Adele has a mysterious presence and a tragic past, and before long, both Adam and Anita find themselves captivated. More than that, they each, in different ways, and without permission, begin to incorporate Adele's story into their art--Adam in a series of paintings, Anita in a new novel. Appanah (The Last Brother, 2010, etc.) has a lyrical, melodic style, but she holds her characters at an odd distance, so they seem more like paper dolls than living beings. Likewise, the things that happen to Adam, Anita, and Adele seem to happen far away, almost as though Appanah is telling the story of a story and not the story itself. The novel's dire ending, therefore, toward which the narrator has hinted throughout the book, doesn't feel earned. And though Appanah introduces intriguing threads related to Anita's attempts to assimilate to (white) French culture, she doesn't follow through on them. As a result, the book has an air of being only partially realized.Lyricism and a chilling atmosphere don't quite make up for a story that feels unfinished.

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June 1, 2018

Mauritian-born, French-based Appanah follows up her quietly moving debut, The Last Brother, with a deftly handled study of how life can go horribly wrong. Adam and Anita meet at a New Year's Eve party near Paris and immediately recognize each other as outsiders; he's an aspiring architect from the provinces who'd rather be painting while she's an immigrant from Mauritius who aspires to write. They marry and return optimistically to his home on the Atlantic Coast but eventually succumb to life's daily grind, with Anita also frustrated by her continuing outsider status as a woman of color as she pursues a journalist's career rather than her own work. Hiring Adèle to tend their daughter revitalizes their dreams and their marriage, but their complicated interactions with Adèle, an undocumented Mauritian with a heartbreaking past, lead to tragedy for all involved. VERDICT A smart and affecting study for most readers.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2018
Married couple Anita and Adam live in a small village in the French countryside, settled into the monotony of the everyday, the artistic passions of their younger selves long abandoned. Adam works as an architect, while Anita is a stringer for the daily newspaper. Both are unfulfilled but unable to vocalize their frustrations to one another. When Anita is assigned a story about a local club, she crosses paths with the mesmerizing Ad�le, an undocumented immigrant from Anita's homeland, Mauritius. Anita and Ad�le form an immediate bond, and Anita hires Ad�le to look after her young daughter. Ad�le's arrival opens new perspectives and brings vigor into the household. Adam rediscovers his passion as a painter, while Anita recovers her desire for writing. Meanwhile, Ad�le's haunting backstory is slowly revealed, her tale adding a troubling shadow to her role as Anita and Adam's newfound muse. As family dynamics shift, truths become increasingly muddled, leading to a harrowing crescendo. Appanah's (The Last Brother, 2011) tightly told tale offers an affecting story of displacement, regret, and the meaning of home.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)