The Red Sofa

Now in paperback, The Red Sofa is a quiet French novella exploring love, memory, and the perspective that travel gives us on both. In The Red Sofa, we meet Anne, a young woman setting off on the Trans-Siberian Railway in order to find her former lover, Gyl, who left twenty years before. As the train moves across post-Soviet Russia and its devastated landscapes, Anne reflects on her past with Gyl and their patriotic struggles, as well as on the neighbor she has just left behind, Clmence Barrot. Rocked by the trains movements Anne is moved by her memory of Clmence, who is old and whose memory is failing, but who has not lost her taste for life and adventure. Ensconced on her red sofa at home, Clmence loves to tell Anne her life story, mourning lost loved ones and celebrating the lives of brave, rebellious women who went before her. Eventually, Annes train trip returns her home having not found Gyl, but having found something much more meaningfulherself.