Underground Time

De Vigan (No and Me) pursues two doomed characters in their Parisian isolation with her second novel, but treats them with more coldness than empathy. When a clairvoyant predicts that her life will change “on the twentieth of May,” Mathilde, once her boss’s right-hand woman, is steadily relieved of her responsibilities and ostracized at work after having what she thought was a polite disagreement in a business meeting. While Mathilde desperately hopes for an explanation for this banishment, she stubbornly clings to the job that supports her and her three children. Meanwhile, young EMT Thibault contemplates the emptiness of his life as he drives his emergency medical rounds. Thibault separated from his latest girlfriend because he felt no connection to her and left a thriving country practice (losing his dream of becoming a surgeon), but now questions why he wanted to come to Paris in the first place. De Vigan moves these two lost souls around their métro, boulot, dodo days, from arrondissements to numbing office corridors, as they lose themselves further and further in moody self-reflection, a tenor that de Vigan holds but doesn’t escalate, until a vague conclusion confirms that her characters are more philosophical construct than flesh and blood. (Dec.)