Les inéquitables by Philippe Djian (review)

Patrick was shot to death in a drug deal gone bad. His wife Diana, moved by grief and perhaps even more personal demons, has attempted suicide three times. Joël, Diana's brother, has a history of violence against women, which culminates in his killing his wife Brigitte. Patrick's brother Marc, a thirty-something virgin, is extremely protective of Diana. Serge is Diana's lover. His wife Charlotte is habitually stoned, vaguely promiscuous, and has one hand. The story takes place in Biarritz, whose beaches are littered with lingering tourists and occasional bags of drugs that drift to shore from parts unknown. The backstory features a drug war between a vicious gang of adolescents and rapacious adults. Just how any of this came about is largely unclear. The reader knows little about the principal characters. Diana is a dentist whose profession appears to play no role in the novel, as does Charlotte's single hand. Marc's prudence with women remains mysterious until he suddenly experiences an explosion of testosterone toward the end of the novel. Djian is often compared to Hemingway, but in this novel, while the characters are clearly under pressure, they display little grace. To the extent there is a dominant stylistic technique in this work, it is ambiguity, an ambiguity so pronounced that it creates more confusion than interest. Was Patrick really a drug dealer, or might he have seen an undercover cop? Whatever he was, his presence hovers over Diana and Marc, but seems to extend to the others as well: "Nous souffrons de son absence, nous souffrons de sa présence, de son omniprésence" (104). Did Joël really intend to kill Brigitte? This never happened in his earlier attacks on women. Or is the reader simply invited to speculate? Why is Diana so psychologically vulnerable, even though she has two strong men to lean on? Is anything to be garnered from the clash between ados et adultes? Finally, there is the title, Les inéquitables. To what does it allude? The situation of women who seem regularly abused in the story, social inequalities that lead young and old into crime, the disadvantage the honest have in confrontations with the dishonest? Even hints of answers or approaches to these questions would have provided the reader with options to ponder, possibilities to examine. Instead there is the spectacle of not-so-tough guys in an entrenched battle with the younger generation, and beautiful women whose function is to be placed on a pedestal (Marc with Diana), used (Serge with Charlotte), or abused (Joël with Brigitte). In Les inéquitables Djian has produced a rather taut narrative about people who manage to be opaque without being intriguing, or even interesting.