ARGONAUT BOOKS

Four narrators, a student from a café, a private detective hired by an aggrieved husband, the heroine herself and one of her lovers, construct a portrait of Jacqueline Delanque, otherwise known as Louki. The daughter of a single mother who works in the Moulin Rouge, Louki grows up in poverty in Montmartre. Her one attempt to escape her background fails when she is rejected from the Lycee Jules-Ferry. She meanders on through life, into a cocaine habit, and begins frequenting the Café Condé, whose regulars call her 'Louki'. She drifts into marriage with a real estate agency director, but finds n...Read More