Crawl Space

The enduring accomplishment of this novel is the creation of Emile Poulquet, a fascinating character like no other in contemporary literature. Meidav boldly brings us into the mind of a functionary of the French occupation who cooly sent hundreds (?) to their death during World War II. Poulquet is repulsive at times, sly and funny at others, but he is never banal. She does not shrink from showing the extent of his ugliness, but she also makes her fugitive from justice oddly sympathetic. He is vulnerable, imaginative, passionate and horribly self-deluded. His justifications for his actions are comically absurd, but the exploration of his self-loathing is so penetrating, he comes to seem one of us, a very human monster. This is a courageous book; Meidav insists on moral complexity, and forces us to confront our own capacity for betrayal & cowardice. That she does so with great wit, brio and inventiveness makes Crawlspace delightful as well as sobering.

The first person narrator, Emile Poulquet, a collaborating French bureaucrat during Nazi occupation, is far too insightful to grant himself absolution, even fifty years later, with the clichéd "banality of evil" label. In his youth, he had dutifully prepared lists of French Jews in his prefecture, knowing that they would be sent to concentration camps. In retrospect, he particularly feels the guilt for not saving his childhood friend Izzy. Poulquet returns to his town after decades of fugitive life in Argentina and in Paris. Given the somber theme, what makes Crawl Space surprisingly enjoyable is the consummate comic verve with which Edie Meidav deftly presents multi-layered ironies.

Ms. Meidav has convincingly told the story of a man of another generation, another culture and another moral system. Each thought, feeling and moment presented to the reader is supported by genuine evidence, including recollection of past events. Those past events are often selected with such a keen sense of their significance and with such vividness that reading the novel has a wonderfully eerie quality. The novel ties into truths far beyond the words on the page and invites--almost compels--the reader to think. None of this is achieved at the expense of telling an interesting story that is unfolding in the present moment, and through this effective duality of past and present, the author achieves a meaningful exploration of morality, history, culture, the human mind, and most of all the human heart. It is a book worthy of reading more than once and its release in hardcover is an appropriate acknowledgement of its durability.

If books were sold according to how good they were, you'd have to lay out at least a hundred bucks for this sucker. Fortunately that's not the case. Not a fast paced thriller, this book takes the time to do it right. The one big disadvantage you'll suffer from if you read it is that most everything else you've ever read (and probably ever will read)is going to seem like cheap junk. That's OK, that devilish little bargain is well worth it. I'll leave it to other reviewers to spoil the plot for you.

From 1940-1945, Emile Poulquet served as the Prefecture of Finier in which he exiled thousands to die. After the War, he had cosmetic surgery to disguise himself by eliminating the facial hump his father thought personified evil, but would identify him to authorities on their Nazi sympathizer witch-hunt. In 1999, the authorities catch eight-four years old Emile, who stands trial for his role in genocide over five decades earlier. However, he remains spry and sharp, and escapes. Emile takes the train south to Finier. In the train's lavatory he writes his last will to give to his Arianne, a resistance hero's widow, for he expects that upon returning for the first time since he spent a month there in 1960, this will end his odyssey. In Finier, Emile is sidetracked by the town's wartime reunion that touches his withered soul as he knows he can never participate though he obsesses with the need to join even at the cost of his wasted life. CRAWL SPACE is a deep character study of an octogenarian who knows that even death will not eliminate the guilt that haunts him. His need to "go home" grips readers, but Emile knows that he can never truly go home. Interestingly he feels more remorse over one incident than over sending thousands to their certain death as the latter is more a statistical consequence of his job while the former was caused by his emotions. Edie Meidav does the impossible turning a Nazi butcher into a sympathetic protagonist though the audience will believe he deserves an abode in hell; Emile would affirm that a life with no place to call home is hell. Harriet Klausner