Impardonnables

by Philippe Djian

The Basque landscape is a delightfully sinister setting. Francis, a sixty-year-old author, has not written a word in the twelve years since his first wife and eldest daughter died in a tragic accident. Now his surviving daughter, Alice, a famous actress, has vanished, leaving her husband and twin daughters clueless as to her whereabouts. Francis's second marriage of ten years, to Judith, is also falling apart, and his distress is compounded by his anxiety over Alice's disappearance. He finds comfort in the company of an old friend, Anne-Marguerite, along with her son, Jérémie, a laconic criminal attempting to remake himself in the outside world. But when Francis employs them to uncover evidence of his second wife's affair and to help find his daughter, things go from bad to worse. A mesmerizing literary thriller, Unforgivable is full of setbacks and revelations--an unsettling and starkly elegant meditation on family bonds, betrayals, and reconciliation.