The Bathing Huts (Les Cabines de bain) is a book of recovery, or at least the beginning of recovery. It is written in 1982 off the coast of Brittany in the seaside town of Roscoff.
A young woman sends herself to Roscoff to recover from an illness, but instead, spends her time reflecting on failed relationships and wasted potentialities. Roscoff is a town of old people and it is here that Anne is haunted by the death of her friends and by the memories of her ex-husband. She reflects, “that’s what life must be about: getting used to people leaving you.”
Anne decides to make a list of all the mistakes and weaknesses that have marked the stages in her life. After writing the list, she goes for a swim: “it is in the sea that she forgets those things that she doesn’t like about herself.”
She awards herself a diploma for having loved “difficult” people and forgives herself for having made a few mistakes in her life. She is comforted in her hotel room and begins to recover. She likes hotel rooms. She announces to herself that hotel rooms are places special to happiness and unhappiness alike.
In the novel, there is an acceptance that life fluctuates between routine and unexpected events; between choice and destiny; between happiness and sadness; between illness and health; and between wallowing in self-pity and embracing self-recovery.
Lange, a French author (1926-1996), born in Paris, spent her childhood in Indochina, documented in her 1972 novel, A Little Girl under the Mosquito Net. The Bathing Huts was her first successful novel, a partial memoir. The “illness” she is recovering from in The Bathing Huts is a heart condition which eventually caused her death, and some critics say this is a prophetic novel. She died in her home town, Paris.
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