Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin.

I haven’t written anything for a while, so today I will try and make up for it by telling you about a book which I finished reading on Wednesday night. It is called Astragal by a French writer called Albertine Sarrazin. I suppose the first thing to explain is where Astragal comes from. Well, it is the French name for what is called in English the talus, a small bone in the ankle which transfers the entire weight of the body from the leg to the foot. The protagonist Anne breaks her astragal jumping 30 feet from the top of a prison wall in order to escape. I should also explain how I discovered the book. It is all thanks to Patti Smith. When you become a fan of Patti it is like walking into a library or an art gallery. She wants to share her enthusiasms with you. These days Patti is as well known as a writer as she is as a musician, and her books are littered with references to artists who have influenced her. Patti seems particularly drawn to French poets and writers such as Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire, and Jean Genet. The French have also taken Patti to their heart. She was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 2022. Patti discovered Astragal in a Greenwich Village bookshop in 1968. She was drawn to the cover which proclaimed Albertine as the ‘female Genet’.

Recently I was perusing Patti’s Book Of Days when on page 368 I came across a photo of Patti’s copy of Astragal and a picture of Albertine. With her short, cropped hair and elfin 1960s looks she reminded me slightly of a young Julie Driscoll. Also, in my mind’s eye I imagined her as Beatrice Dalle in the film Betty Blue. That was enough for me. I knew I had to buy the book. The copy I found on eBay published in 2013 said, ‘Introduction by Patti Smith’ which is why I chose that edition.  Patti’s intro is a great piece of writing. She says, ‘Perhaps it is wrong to speak of oneself while writing of another, but I truly wonder if I would have become as I am without her. Would I have carried myself with the same swagger, or faced adversity with such feminine resolve, without Albertine as my guide?’. The American translator Patsy Southgate also deserves a shout out for being a writer with a French soul, empathising with her subject.

Astragal is a fictionalised account of part of Albertine’s own life. Nothing happens to the protagonist Anne which didn’t also happen to Albertine, so I’ll just tell you briefly about her short life. She was born in Algiers in 1937 and abandoned by her Spanish teenage mother. At the age of two she was adopted by a French couple who took her to Aix-En-Provence. Aged 10 she was raped by a relative. Although she was a brilliant student and gifted musician, she constantly rebelled against her adopted parents who tried to mould her into something she wasn’t. They revoked the adoption and sent her to a reform school in Marseille ironically called The Refuge of the Good Shepherd. She waited until easily passing all her exams before escaping to Paris where she reunited with Emmaline a love interest from school. They lived a precarious life of prostitution and crime before being arrested for a bungled armed robbery. Albertine received a seven-year sentence at Fresnes Prison. In prison Albertine kept a journal and wrote and wrote and wrote. In 1957 she escaped when transferred to Doullens reform school. Breaking her ankle during the escape she crawled to the roadside where purely by chance she was rescued by Julien Sarrazin who was also a habitual criminal. This is where the story of Astragal begins.

I won’t tell you any more about the book because hopefully you might read it for yourself, but it is an account of their life on the lam, moving from house to house of Julien’s criminal contacts, always with the knowledge of inevitable re-arrest.  I don’t think it is the greatest book I’ve ever read, but it gripped my attention throughout. I read it in three late night sessions. I couldn’t help but like Albertine despite her life outside the law. She shows no hint of remorse, but you can understand her rebellion against society and authority after her childhood experiences. 

In real life she and Julien were married in prison and Albertine was finally released in 1965. Astragale and La Cavale were published to best-selling great acclaim and she and Julien left their life of crime. In 1967 she had to have kidney surgery which should have been a routine operation, but it was botched, and she died from complications aged only 29. It was a tragic end to an eventful and promising life. Julien successfully sued the hospital for negligence. Her journals, poems and letters were published after her death. Thank you very much to Patti Smith for introducing me to Albertine Sarrazin who lived her short life like a shooting star.

John Prine 'Christmas In Prison'