Pascal Bruckner has been identified with a new group of philosophers who broke away from Marxist thinking in the early 1970's. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's writing, particularly [The Gulag Archipelago] had an effect on what they described as the worship of the master thinkers of the left. They came to believe that these comprehensive systems of thought led to oppression, be it of the left or the right. It is no surprise then that Bruckner's novel published in 2013 is to some extent a critique of western society grounded in the streets of Paris France.

Antonin Dampierre comes from a bourgeois family and two events in his early young life have left scars that cannot be healed. The first and most important of these was as a young man of twenty travelling across an alpine pass alone in his car in mid winter. The car breaks down and he must find shelter from the cold. He finds an inn; closed for the winter, but manages to persuade the ancient female proprietor to let him stay. He is shown a room upstairs and soon falls asleep. He is awakened by the old woman coming into his room; she gets into his bed and lays on top of him, he is pinned down and does not know what to do. He falls asleep again only to find that the old woman has died and he crawls out from underneath and makes his escape. The second incident occurs when he is working as an estate agent in Paris. He is awaiting the arrival of some very rich clients outside a luxurious apartment that he hopes to sell. Just as their chauffeur driven car pulls up at the kerb side, two very drunk homeless men come barrelling down the road. One of them stops outside of the street entrance to the apartment and vomits over the doorstep. His clients agree to look at the apartment but they no longer have an interest and soon leave. As a furious Antonin leaves the apartment the tramp is lying propped up in the doorway and he grabs Antonin's leg. Antonin kicks him and keeps on kicking him until he is dead. He hastily flees the scene waiting then for a call from the police. Nothing happens; he has got away with it. Two things are thus revealed about Antonin: he has a hatred of old or destitute people and has a violent temper. He hatches plans to rid Paris of the homeless destitute people littering the streets and finds himself volunteering to work in a refuge for the homeless, so that he can carry out his murderous schemes.

Antonin's close association with the destitute brings forth all sorts of emotions, on the one hand he bitterly despises them, but on the other hand he comes to grudgingly admire their ability to look after themselves. Pascal Bruckner's novel takes the readers down amongst the homeless and their bitter struggle to survive. We see them through Antonin's eyes and so the worst aspects of their existence are brought to life. It is no surprise that Antonin finds himself sinking down among them and for him it becomes a question of sinking to the bottom, before he can get some sort of redemption.
The novel literally takes the reader through the streets of Paris and the catacombs and sewers that run beneath it: to another world barely glimpsed by most people. Bruckner is careful not to make this seem a fantasy world and real personalities like Bono of the group U2 and Christopher Hitchings: the American critic, find themselves included in the general debate about homeless people. Another theme straddling this novel is the tribal nature of the destitute, the groupings into nationalities that were a feature of the last french novel I read, which was Olivier Noreks's Entre Deux Mondes.

The central story about the fate of Antonin Dampier is a good one and holds the book together. I found the descent into the world of the misery on the streets of Paris pretty good for my soul, but Bruckner's point that some can survive, albeit usually at the expense of others is a fairly hard dose of reality. Of course the question of homeless people in the big cities and what if anything can be done, is outside the scope of this novel, but Bruckner sets the background for such a debate. A four star read. ( )