The Age of Reason (Penguin Modern Classics)

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This is, essentially, all there is to the plot, but from the subsequent carnage it creates, Mathieu is forced to swallow his pride and wheel and deal with his friends, such as the imposing Daniel, who clearly delights in wreaking havoc in other peoples’ lives for the sake of it.

The room was filled with stale heat which had spent its force outside, and left its radiance in the folds of the curtain, and was stagnating there, inert and ominous like a human destiny. She’s so anxiety-ridden she’s become an open cocaine addict, which Boris and Ivich agree is a “good thing” following on from a furtive discussion. Either way, the dozen or so ‘freedom’ sections feel like plasters strapped onto the groaning seething mass of disgust, appalled descriptions of physical functions and an apparently never-ending series of ways for the characters to feel disgusted and revolted by each other. In October, she was well up in botany, and the examiner was quite satisfied: and then she suddenly saw herself opposite a bald chap who was talking about coelenterata [a biology term I don’t fully understand].

There are far too many memorable moments that leave an indelible mark along with the questions and reflections to ponder a long time after the last page is turned over.

Fiction and philosophy inextricably and ‘entertainingly’ combined almost rendering it a page-turner. Peeved, Ivich’s strange mind kicks into action—she begins hacking and slashing at her left hand, spilling blood onto their table. Mathieu’s devotion to this philosophy is no secret, with Lola and Boris even openly discussing how Mathieu approaches his life with personal freedom in mind (it’s also what he teaches to his students). He must run, he must get away as far as possible, immerse himself in noise and light, in a throng of people, he must become a man among his fellows, and feel the eyes of other men upon him. What has really endured of this book is the relentlessness of everyone’s misery and of their super disgust at being human, at having bodies, at ageing, at living.

The Age of Reason is set in 1938 and tells of Mathieu, a French professor of philosophy who is obsessed with the idea of freedom. Mathieu is trying to raise money money for the abortion of a woman with whom he has been living for seven years, and at the same time he is obsessed with a desire for personal freedom. Again, this is central to existentialism’s atheistic outlook – we are free agents in the world who decide our fate, with the idea being to live as morally sound a life as possible. He and Marcelle have been together for some seven years, but it's an odd, hidden arrangement of convenience: he sneaks into her house -- careful not to wake her mother -- a few times a week and otherwise is on his merry way. The thought of manipulating his ‘friend’ amuses the cynical Daniel (‘When Mathieu adopted a Quakerish attitude, Daniel hated him’, p.