Two Hours by Alba Arikha review – an impassioned tale of how life pummels and reshapes us | Fiction
“I write about families,” Natalia Ginzburg said, “because that is where everything starts, where the germs grow.” The French-born writer and musician Alba Arikha clearly agrees, and has set her brilliant third novel firmly within the crucible of two families: the one her narrator is born into and the one she makes herself as an adult. The narrator is Clara, who, at the start, is a 16-year-old living in Paris and shares some biographical details with her author. (But not the fact her godfather was Samuel Beckett and she…