Desirada.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara
• Position: Books: mishaps, myths, and antimodernism

Desirada, by Maryse Conde. Trans., Richard Philcox. New York: Soho, 2001.

Maryse Conde is known as the grande dame of French Caribbean literature, but her characters are too sophisticated and complex to fit regional stereotypes. Indeed, much of Conde's fiction takes place outside her native Guadeloupe.

When Reynalda Titane, a desperate, pregnant, adolescent girl attempts suicide by drowning, she is pulled out of the water by Ranelise, a cook in the village of La Pointe. Reynalda gives birth to a little girl, Marie-Noelle, and then disappears. Ranelise, who has had a series of miscarriages, becomes the child's foster mother. Reynalda, it turns out, has fled to France, where she intends to get an education so she won't end up a maid, like her mother.

Desirada is the story of Marie-Noelle's search for her own identity. The girl cannot rest until she finds her mother and learns the name of her father. Her investigation takes her from the Caribbean to Europe, Africa, the United States, and then back to the Caribbean and Europe.

As an adolescent, Marie-Noelle crosses the Atlantic to join Reynalda in Paris. However, poor health forces her out of the city to a sanatorium for girls in Provence. Reynalda, who is working on a doctorate in social science, is too busy for her, and Marie-Noelle grows more and more lonely and detached. She still has no idea who her father is, and curiosity and nostalgia for happier times eat away at her. To ease her emptiness, she becomes involved in a series of love affairs, but none proves satisfactory.

The only positive male in Marie-Noelle's life is Ludovic, an urbane, socially committed man who cares for her as though she were his own daughter. However, both Reynalda and Marie-Noelle have been too traumatized by their experiences to form strong attachments to other people, even to each other, and Marie-Noelle is overcome with resentment when her mother gets pregnant. Reynalda winds up ditching Ludovic, and when Marie-Noelle tries unsuccessfully to seduce him, she, too, turns against him. She does manage to get an education, though, completing her baccalaureate. She then takes off for Boston with her new husband, a jazz saxophonist, who becomes increasingly depressed when his career fails to take off. Marie-Noelle seeks distraction in the arms of his friend, and then, in the arms of every other man she can get a...