Roses for Credit

Has anybody read Roses for credit (Roses à crédit in the original) by Elsa Triolet?

Triolet was Lilya Brik’s younger sister. And Brik was the famous mistress of the Russian poet Mayakovsky. Triolet emigrated to France right after the Russian revolution. But once a commie, always a commie. She married Louis Aragon and converted him to Communism.

In any case, she wasn’t a bad writer. I read her novel Roses à crédit when I was maybe 14, and it impressed me deeply. The main character, Martine, grows up amidst the grime and ugliness of extreme poverty. She wants things to be beautiful around her. And clean. Beautiful, straight lines. Everything clean and modern looking. She marries into the middle class and starts buying tons of furniture and appliances on credit, and then the novel starts the Communist indoctrination on how not wanting to live in misery and be surrounded by excrement will lead you to being eaten by rats. Which, I know, crazy. But the novel wouldn’t have been published in the USSR without that degree of cuckoo propaganda.

Roses à crédit did not make on me the effect desired by the Soviet apparatchiks. I really identified with Martine and rooted for her. Not with the stuff that entailed buying on credit. I have zero credit card debt, by the way. But I hate the grime and the ugliness amidst which I grew up.

Are there any other Martine fans here, by any chance? She’s like a French La de Bringas, a century later.