Tous les hommes désirent naturellement savoir by Nina Bouraoui (review)

The narrator is one among other humans in Paris and wonders what her links are to them. In 1981, she left Algiers for Paris, when she was fourteen years old. Now she remembers the details of living in Algeria and wants to reconstruct the story of her homosexual orientation. She is also a métisse whose father is a native Algerian banker and whose mother is a blond, blue-eyed, and fair-skinned woman from Rennes who has inspired the narrator to be a writer while also giving her guilt regarding her sexual orientation. The narrator traces her odyssey by alternating episodes entitled "Se souvenir," "Devenir," and "Savoir." This alternation provides a credible method for advancing in her project to know herself better and for eliciting the reader's sympathy. As she relives her mother's recovery from violence by men in Algiers during the terrorist attacks of the 1970s and 80s, the narrator sets herself apart from her mother who would rather not speak about those aggressive experiences because, by not stating them, the mother denies their reality. Her mother likes the visual experiences of movies which, for her, improve upon life by transcending it. The narrator's photographic memory seems to have been a similar experience. Closely related to the narrator's cathartic experience of her writing is the practice of going to a Parisian all-woman nightclub called the Kat. Eventually she befriends Ely and her associates from the Kat. But Ely is an alcoholic, and her friends get together to use drugs. The narrator finds this reliance upon substance abuse to be distracting rather than helpful with her pursuit of her homosexual nature. Essentially the narrator uses her writings to explore her guilt about her sexual orientation as she sees herself radically different from those around her, both her family and her various communities in Algeria and in France. Her mother's role modeling strongly influences her despite enigmatic maternal absences. The narrator must also resolve issues related to her childhood in Algeria. There she has a friendship with Ali who is gay and attracted to the narrator because she sees herself as a boy. This role comes from her father who treats his younger daughter as the son he never had. The narrator uses masculine pronouns to talk about herself with Ali and enjoys masculine models for being a writer. She writes about herself with words that make her ashamed of who she is and uses her writing to overcome her homophobia and to search for an organic self that is masqueraded. The mask reminds us of Roland Barthes who spoke about moving forward with his mask. Many masks dot this story's landscape. The narrator identifies an attractive woman named Julia in the Kat but hides behind her fear of beginning her own lesbian relationship. Ely tells the narrator that Julia is dangerous. All told, we share in the narrator's greater danger that she faces in the self-knowledge she gains and in writing to us about it.