THE MONROE GIRLS

An elusive, centrifugal story of a grim near future that might stop George Orwell in his tracks.

Breton, who shares a name with the noted surrealist, is schizophrenic, locked away in a psych ward but with the uncanny ability to see distant events out on the edge of a city that might as well be the East Berlin of old—or a dark, rainy version of a Tibetan bardo. The city is ruled by the Party, which would seem to be in steep decline, even if the downtrodden proles won’t admit that awful truth: “It’ll last till the bitter end,” says one old woman. (Even the young in French author Volodine’s tale are preternaturally aged.) “We’ll all be dead and buried to a man and the Party will still be there.” So, too, will Monroe, a member of the inner circle executed years earlier but somehow returned to life, as are the girls of the title, fierce fighters with names like Lilia Adouldjamani, Mirka Goldenberg, and Mariana Magadane—and the love of Breton’s life, Rebecca Rausch, who died 30 years earlier and yet stalks the streets, armed to the teeth. The chief difference between the living and the dead is that the dead swear more, and Rebecca in particular hurls F-bombs like grenades (“Fuck!…I was just born, the night is young, and already my feet are frozen!”). Alive or dead, Rebecca makes for a fine revolutionary, demanding that the masses “approve a new direction for the Party, now restructured under Monroe’s leadership, and to finish the great cleansing of the cowards, bureaucrats, opportunists, and traitors by hunting them down in their dens or by exposing them if they were disguised as hospital workers, hybrid creatures, or patients.” Alas, things don’t work out quite to plan, especially when Monroe himself returns to add more mayhem to an already chaotic narrative.

A lively and beguiling tale that depicts a world no one should wish to live in.