Berriault takes up his extraordinary, sometimes subtly ironic, sometimes painfully direct sensibility to address the inevitability of suffering and the nature of individuality, and risks peeking into the true essence of our vital dilemmas. What motivates us to act? What is the root of our behavior? What restrains or changes us? Her writing is sober and evanescent, as if imitating the pulse of life, but every so often empathy makes her unusually luminous.