Crawl Space: A Novel

by Edie Meidav

A war criminal returns to the scene of the crime

It's 1999 and Emile Poulquet awaits sentencing in a Paris court for deporting thousands to almost certain death during World War II. But haunted by ghosts from his past, and determined to confront his dark legacy, he escapes and heads toward his beloved Finier, a rural town in the south of France where he once served as prefect. His return will have explosive consequences.

In Finier, Poulquet finds shelter within the strange embrace of a group of teenage wastrels, and encounters new breeds of idealism, degeneracy, and friendship. He sets out to find Arianne-a lifelong obsession and the widow of a Resistance hero-in order to hand her his last will and testament. But as he begins his quest, he cannot help being drawn, inexorably, toward another circle of refugees and reporters in town for a wartime reunion. He doesn't yet know that his worst betrayal-and the greatest test of his own ability to pardon another-is yet to come.

By turns epic and intimate, reflective and slyly humorous, Crawl Space limns the gray zone between past and future. Edie Meidav poignantly describes one man's tragic attempt to come to terms with the past.

Genres: Politics, Literary Fiction, Fiction

464 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

About KINGDOM OF THE YOUNG, Kirkus in a starred review calls it a " penetrating collection that glides among an impressive breadth of storytelling modes with warmth and easy brilliance." Called an "American original" by The Daily Beast, Edie Meidav is also the author of LOLA, CALIFORNIA (FSG), CRAWL SPACE (FSG), and THE FAR FIELD: A NOVEL OF CEYLON. Winner of a Lannan Fellowship, a Howard Fellowship, the Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman, the Bard Fiction Prize, her books called editorial picks by multiple newspapers, she teaches in the UMass Amherst MFA.
Find her on Twitter @lolacalifornia and on Instagram @ediemeidav

Reviews

[Nathanial]

Miedav writes entirely from the perspective of a Nazi collaborator from Vichy France. Set in 1999, the plot traces an attempted homecoming, and includes detailed flashbacks to the narrator's childhood. While couched in the first-person point of view, the narration manages to present sympathetic portrayals of varied characters, including a cast of Holocaust survivors, a bevy of international journalists, and a 'tribe' of 'wastrels,' who summarily adopt the disguised protagonist. Lively dialogues carry the story and still leave room for revelatory ruminations. The author's familiarity with current slang and conversational conventions may require a stretch of the imagination to accord the shady protagonist a similar ability to negotiate social mores, but this is not a society novel, nor a psychological portrait. The range of interests and concerns that Miedav brings to the table may exceed that which readers are willing to grant to a war criminal and fugitive, but that challenge to categorical stereotypes can work in both ways, making Crawl Space a valuable addition to a literature of irony that doesn't rely on pastiche to make a point.

[Lydia]

Highly Recommend! Loved it!

[Lydia]

Awesome insight into character.

[Laura]

Went to a presentation by this writer. Tried one of her books - awful!

[Elizabeth G]

Meidav delivers a haunting, slyly humorous portrait of complicity and attempted redemption in 1999 France. Emile Poulquet, awaiting sentencing for deporting thousands during World War II, escapes Paris to confront his dark legacy in the rural town where he once served as prefect. The novel's reflective turns and tragicomic tone generate genuine unease, understanding that ghosts from former lives cannot be outrun. Meidav's exploration of one man's attempt to come to terms with the past avoids easy moralizing, instead offering explosive consequences that feel earned rather than merely plotted. The crawl space of the title becomes literal and metaphorical, a hiding place that cannot protect from history's reach. Bard Fiction Prize winner that deserves wider recognition for its unflinching examination of how perpetrators live with themselves, and what happens when they try to die differently.

[Joe]

This is an unusual book, in that I only made it about halfway through, as the storyline just didn't grab me, but I absolutely loved the prose. If you can make sense of what Meidav is trying to do, then I suppose it would deserve a much higher rating.

[catharine]

“This is the problem with our war memories: the king is dead or the king goes mad, and then we all have to live in the shadowed eternity of the king was a hero.”