Tense and Time in L’Air du Temps (1985)

Jessica Denzer

Book Review

A review of Diane Josefowicz’s L’Air du Temps (1985) (Regal House Publishing). Purchase the novel directly from the publisher here.

I don’t know much about perfume. In fact, I know nothing. As a sometimes wearer of deodorant, and as a buyer of unscented moisturizer and laundry detergent, the world of designer scents is unknown territory to me. I do know a little French, however, and I do know the work of Diane Josefowicz, specifically her translations of French poet Anna de Noailles, two poems of which we published in the 2023 Summer Quarterly. So of course, when I received Josefowicz’s latest novel L’Air du Temps (1985), from Regal House Publishing, I assumed I was in for something slightly French, perhaps retro Parisian, something about time, about the air, perhaps about the spirit of the moment. 

While Josefowicz newest work might not be very French — except perhaps the understated brutality that marks so much of the novella (something akin to Jigsaw, Sybill Bedford’s 1989 English language novel set mostly in interim war French Riviera) — L’Air du Temps (1985) is definitely about the spirit of the moment. Set in Maple Bay, an affluent suburban town somewhere in Rhode Island, Josefowicz’s second book presents a layered tale of appearances and performances masking the dark underbelly of greed and power. Told through the perspective of Zinnia, the oldest child of the Zompa family, the novel weaves between past and present, memory and “fact.” First-person narration jumps between past and present tense, through recollection and moment to moment, as thirty-five-year-old Zinnia retells thirteen-year-old Zinnia’s story.

To say a great deal happens in L’Air du Temps (1985) wouldn’t be exactly true. To say that very little happens would also be incorrect. Two truths can exist at the same time. A great deal can happen, like the murder of Mr. Marfeo, her father’s accountant, and very little can happen, like the lazy summer days that unfold for Zinnia following the brutal shooting and arrest of JT, another of her father’s employees. “Point of Fact”, a phrase stated by Zinnia throughout the novel, is a practical tool for such a set up. It tells us Zinnia knows the facts. It also tells us she knows nothing. These two coexisting truths, to know and not know, is a running theme throughout, perhaps most fully realized in a moment when thirty-five-year-old Zinnia reflects on her parents’ marriage:

I won’t say their marriage was happy. Who can tell about these things? My mother always said you could never know anything for sure about anyone else’s domestic arrangements. What goes on behind closed doors. Except the children, I suppose. They always know, even if they can’t say what that knowledge is. 

So then, who is to say what actually happens in such a novel? Perhaps it is all in the details. For example, the detail that her father has inherited his father’s successful costume jewelry factory. The fact that the manufacturing of fake gemstones is what allows the Zompas to live in the affluent suburb of Maple Bay, away from the poorer and dirtier suburb adjacent to their own town. “Different as the two places were,” Zinnia tells us, “Honeyville had its hooks deep in Maple Bay.” She tells us that the price for the quiet curated beauty of their wealthy neighborhood is the town of Honeyville, “which stank of grease and solvent and the friend onions that slipped from the steak-and-cheese grinders my father ate for lunch.” Zinnia compares the Honeyville of 1985 to Maple Bay in the same chapter that her father compares fine jewelry to the fakes he makes in his factory. “They’re not the same, Stanley,” Zinnia’s mother proclaims, “and you know it.” And the reader knows it too. Our narrator sets up two different towns (Honeyville and Maple Bay), two different gems (real and fake), and asks us to look at them side by side but doesn’t tell us how we should interpret them. Instead she lets us draw our own connections, allows us to see how the hooks of lies dig into truth and turn truth about, manipulate it, force it into a complex multiplicity of facts. The dark parts of our world, our lives, our desires are always standing next to our cleaner, more perfect selves. It is the price we pay for such perfection, and it is one of the more important lessons thirteen-year-old Zinnia must learn.

It’s through this lesson that L’Air du Temps (1985) defines the spirit of the moment. As the novel moves forward, the past tense of thirty-five-year-old Zinnia gives way to the present tense of thirteen-year-old Zinnia. The tense change is sneaky, and we might not notice if we’re not tracking the beats of memory, the slips of time that Josefowicz has so expertly crafted. Thirty-five-year-old Zinnia narrates in past tense, framing her story with phrases like “I can’t forget” and “for a long time.” She separates herself from the with clarifying statements such as “what I’m saying is,” and “In my memory,” to distinguish herself as separate from the story, to place herself in the position of reflection rather than direct experience. However, as we move forward, we see slips in tenses, first marked by labeled phrases indicating the memory, what is being recalled. But soon, those labels fall away and more and more we are propelled into the moment through the present tense action and experience of thirteen-year-old Zinnia, watching and observing the adults in her life, seeing what goes on behind closed doors, even if she doesn’t have the words for what she is seeing. In this way, knowledge is gained by Zinnia and then given to the reader through implied connections, assumptions and details. Just as information so often enters the mind of a child: confusingly and quietly, and it is stored there like a chest full of treasure, building and building until the moment when everything suddenly becomes clear. Clear like a real diamond, or a fake one, depending on how good the craftsman is. 

This detail of tense, of the slipping of time, carries us through the novel like the various versions of the Lincoln Continental that move in and out of the narrative. Again, another detail. A crumb to follow. A piece of information. Thirteen-year-old Zinnia is our past, but she is also our present. She is the same person as the thirty-five-year-old Zinnia, but she is not the same, she is more immediate, more urgent, less wise, and so more perceptive. It is thirteen-year-old Zinnia who blushes for the dubious JT, and yearns for Mr. Kresge the science teacher. And it is thirteen-year-old Zinnia who reveals to us the details of her father’s corruption, her mother’s potential desires (for work, knowledge but also possibly for Mr. Kresge), and it is through thirteen-year-old Zinnia in all of her immediate now that unravels the mystery of what happened to Mr. Marfeo, even though she “can’t say what that knowledge is.” 

For Zinnia, L’Air du Temps is her favorite perfume. It is the designer scent she thinks about purchasing at the mall with a wad of dollar bills her mother has given her: 

Do you know what it means, Mom? L’air du temps

My schoolgirl French is too rusty even to hazard a guess. What do you think it means?

Our eyes meet. She is smiling. What does it mean, this old French phrase?

Well, I say, l’air could just be what you breathe. It’s also something you put on, like an attitude. Which makes it nice as a name for a perfume. But an air is also a kind of song. So maybe it means song of time.

Words can mean many meanings; they can hold many truths. Beautiful can also be ugly. A song can also be a spirit. A truth can be a mask. Or what lies under the mask. Perhaps that is the spirit L’Air du Temps (1985) captures so distinctly in time. That moment, when you’re thirteen, and you’re both young and grown, an in-between person looking at the world through an in-between lens, and it is this lens, this present tense lens, that possibly can see all.

L’Air du Temps (1985)

Diane Josefowicz

Regal House Publishing

$18

113pp

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Jessica Denzer received her B.A. in English Literature from Fordham University and her M.F.A. in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. She is a researcher in residence at the New York Public Library and writes fiction and nonfiction. Her work has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, and she supplies a range of editorial contributions to Iron Oak Editions,, L’Esprit Literary Review, and Four Way Review. She is currently working on a novel and a collection of essays.