Underground Time
ABOUT
THE BOOK
Everyday Mathilde takes the Metro to the office of a large multinational, where she works in the marketing department. And every day Thibault, a paramedic, drives to the addresses he receives from his controler. Mathilde is unhappy at work, frozon out of office life by her moody boss.
Meanwhile, Thibault is unhappy in love and all too aware that he may be the only human being many of the people he visits will see for the entire day. Mathilde and Thibault seem to be just two anonymous figures in a crowded city, pushed and shoved and pressured continuously by the isolating urban world. But surely these two complementary souls, travelling along separate paths, must meet?
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
The story exposes the brutal truth of what the big city really is. It is a story about being lost and solitude. About a man and a woman who lose control over their lives. It makes us think about Mathilde and Thibault – people we pass everyday in the street. And think what would happen if we were them.
There are two victims in this novel: a markting manager who is at the mercy, or lack of mercy, of a ruthless corporate machine that has the power to destroy lives and a paramedic who is a slave to the central control which dispatches him to the sick, the dying, the helpless and the hopeless. Set within a single day, those two disparate and quietly desperate people look out on their soulless and loveless urban world, pushed and shoved by pressures they cannot control. A contemplation of the potential and often very real brutality of 21st century city life. An elegant and eloquent prose.
Underground Time is a great novel; it presents the brutality of a city, in which our two characters move towards an inevitable meeting.