La Vie is Like That explores memory and forgetting, language acquisition and loss, migration, love, grief, family, and identity. The book was inspired by author Magali Duzant’s experience of learning a language while her father, recently diagnosed with dementia, began forgetting his own. Structured as a primer or alphabet learning book, La Vie is Like That is composed of short passages that form a non-chronological narrative reflecting a circular sense of time. Duzant employs a conversational tone, combining discussion of her archives with humorous asides. The book balances the text with images capturing movement, touch, light, and shadow as translated through Risography. The author traverses time and space in her examination of a range of topics: Greek myth, Japanese temple architecture, CAPTCHAs, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Russian and Turkish baths on East 10th Street, the letter Y in Romance languages, linguistic false friends, dream interpretation.
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