Thursday 2 February 2012

"Belle Famille," - by Arthur Dreyfus - Chapter 23

Résumé of chapter 23

After regaining consciousness, Laurence, who is not annoyed at her husband, (and even rather liked it) cries with him. It is beyond her power to change the events of that fatal night into something she'd like it to have been.

To get some air, Laurence walks to the rocks on the shore.

She has never in her life found fulfillment. Her husband has never understood her expectations, in spite of a willingness to try.

She thinks of her video: "
She was not famous, but she was known. it was like being more real." From Tony, she learned the essential principles of media training: "Know when to be silent,...list the facts, think about the details of what she is saying." The golden rule, in crisis communication, being to "repeat the concrete details, over and over, robotically - and nothing but the concrete details (date, time, places, names)" She then realises that since the start of the day, she she has not thought about her son.

Andreotti has met a young woman who wants to set up home with him. Given the state of the world and the constraints of his job, he is hardly enthusiastic. In a local paper, he reads a news item: a bather has been injured in the foot by a meat fork. The newspaper calls on the local people to be careful of objects thrown into the sea. And Andreotti deplores that a newspaper should give so much space to a scratch on the beach, a quite insignificant event. Ah, "since Berlusconi, things have gone downhill..."

Notes: Thanks, as usual, to Frencheuropean.

The book, "Belle Famille," by Arthur Dreyfus, can be purchased here



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