Entertained, appalled (once or twice), irritated (occasionally), enthralled (often), amused (in places where this was not the author's intention), moved and, above all, compelled to stay with her to the last page, I stand back from [Force of Circumstance] and, for me, this life gives purchase most clearly in three aspects and in this order: the experience of being French during the Algerian war; the position of the Leftist outside the Communist Party; woman as intellectual. Here is Simone de Beauvoir.

Being female was a precondition, yet, in order of importance, I put it third in the forces that have shaped her life because she has dealt with it, in the particular context of that life, successfully—even triumphantly—and in this last volume [of Simone de Beauvoir's three-volume autobiography] it crops up more in the light of reflection on these triumphs than in the glare of battle...