The Birthday Party (first published in French in 2020, now appearing in a deft English translation by Daniel Levin Becker) is set almost entirely in a bleak hamlet called Three Lone Girls Stead — a peculiar name, suggesting solitude, communion, danger. It’s a nowhere place, charmless and dilapidated, clearly marked for abandonment; perhaps it got its name because everyone else left. Patrice inherited his family’s farm there, on which he and Marion now live in unremarkable poverty with their sheltered young daughter, Ida.
