The latest addition to my website isLydie Salvayre‘s La Vie commune (Everyday Life). This novel tells the story of Suzanne Barette,a widow of thirty-two years who works as a secretary in the office of M. Meyer, a successful marketing manager. A new secretary has been appointed and Suzanne really does not like her – cheap perfume, thrusting large breasts and objecting to Suzanne smoking. Gradually, Suzanne becomes massively obsessed with the unnamed secretary and finds extreme faults with everything about her. I loathe her. She is hideous. She gets no sympathy from her married daughter and son-in-law, nor from her doctor,a little from the old, infirm man who lives in her building and none from anyone else as her obsession grows and grows as M. Meyer seems to like the woman, which makes Suzanne even more angry. Her ever mounting complaints and obsession are both very funny, as she seems quite unreasonable to us, but also somewhat sad. Salvayre really gives us a a superb portrait of a woman unreasonably out of control.