There are two of them. The sister, Marie, and the brother, Jean. Two of them in the Santoire house. The last two. They were never chosen, they never chose; never married, never had children. They were crushed by the all-powerful mother, who only loved and acknowledged the eldest son, Pierre, who died at the age of 33. The father hardly existed. Without possessions, tolerated in the house for his labor, all he did was procreate. Yet they are a family nevertheless. A family coming to its end with those two, in the vainglorious house whose rooms have been closed off, abandoned to the shadows, one after the other, except for the big room downstairs and Jean’s bedroom.
On the other side of the little street, just a glance away, lives the plethoric tribe of neighbors whom the mother looked down upon. Insignificant people of little means, farmhands doing day labor. With joyful tenacity they have managed to escape their formerly precarious situation, marry and produce children. They have become the strong ones: they own, they purchase, they borrow and pay back, they latch on to things and jump on moving trains. They’re modern and have a taste for the future.
Yet the neighbors have had their share of misery. Their little Alice, taken away and tortured in the dark winter woods, after she went in a car with a man. The culprit was never found, despite the investigations and the newspaper articles,. Silence has fallen over the mystery of Alice, who lived for such a short time.
The reader listens to the voice of Marie, despite the fact that she never says I. Marie exists to remember the tortured bodies: her older brother’s, devoured by disease, and Alice’s, slaughtered like a dumb beast. Crucified on the altar of the mother and of familial vanity, Marie and Jean are the last Indians. Their world has vanished. From their window, they greedily contemplate the lives of their neighbors. The lives of others. Of people who are truly alive.

A confrontation between two worlds. The world of the Santoires, wealthy landowners proud of their possessions and of their past. And the world of their neighbors, uncouth farmhands. One world is in decline, while the other has a taste for the future. A portrait of two families, in shared isolation ‘til death does them part.