Lila Says

The tragedy of chronic unemployment and hopelessness among North African youth in contemporary France explodes in this anonymous first novel that has garnered front-page attention in Europe. Purportedly, the author--""Chimo,"" the 19-year-old narrator of the doomed blue-collar love story--wrote this account in two school notebooks delivered to the publisher by a lawyer. In a note, the publisher confesses that opinion in the house was divided between those who thought the author was a poorly educated but talented young person or an experienced writer perpetrating a hoax. Fatherless, poor and, like most of his friends in the Old Oak Housing Project near Paris, without a job or prospects, Chimo finds that writing about Lila, a 16-year-old girl who befriends him, transports him from the bleakness of his life. Chimo is an unremarkable, shy and sensitive boy; Lila's angelic looks are in stunning contrast to the precocious fantasies about sex that she shares with him. An enigma in the projects because of her blonde hair, blue eyes, Christian faith and elusiveness, as well as the crazy, devil-fearing aunt with whom she lives, Lila confides only in Chimo. Is she a hustler working for rich men in the city or just a confused kid whose fantasies serve as her own method of escape, much as Chimo's secret nocturnal writing acts as his? Prurience aside--and there is plenty of it--Chimo's simple narrative aches with the writer's yearning for self-expression, and frustration at being ""excluded"" from the language: ""You always feel you're sailing right by a green island you can't get close to... an island stuffed with wonderful fruits, words that people pick for themselves and feast on... but not you, never you."" Revelation or hoax, its melodramatic ending a shocking surprise, the work of this writer resonates powerfully. (Jan.) FYI: His identity still unknown, Chimo has published a second novel in France.