La Joie de Vivre (French Edition)

Pauline Quenu, the daughter of shopkeepers in the Parisian business district Les Halles (see The Fat and the Thin , aka The Belly of Paris ), is taken in by relatives on the coast of Normandy following the death of her parents. There, Pauline - kind and open-minded - is confronted with a gout-plagued host, his avaricious wife, and their lazy son, a morbid hypochondriac, whom she is expected to marry. While the family takes advantage of Pauline, using up the inheritance her parents left to her, Pauline is gradually transformed into a dejected and resigned young woman. Death and accident soon hang over the small house on the Norman coast...