A Bright Future - Prix Goncourt des Lycéens 2008, Catherine Cusset

Elena, a young Romanian woman born in Bessarabia and tossed about by history, meets a man at a ball in 1958 and falls passionately in love with him. He is Jewish, and his parents oppose the marriage. Elena eventually marries Jacob and fulfills her dream: to leave Ceaușescu's communist and antisemitic Romania. To emigrate to the United States. She becomes an American and takes the name Helen. She has broken with the past, but the future is no longer a dream. Helen is now confronted with a reality that eludes her: her husband's illness and depression; the independence of the son for whom she sacrificed everything, and who marries a Frenchwoman despite his parents' opposition. Helen does not like this selfish, arrogant young woman, imbued with an almost national sense of superiority. Marie is afraid of this mother-in-law whose silence harbors growing hostility. Yet, between these two women who are opposites in every way - their origins, their values, and their attachment to the same man - something grows that resembles love.