Amidst a buzzing Paris, we find two individuals at odds with their surrounds. In spite of the steady hubbub around them, each is enveloped in a web of loneliness and sorrow that threatens to annihilate them. The woman and man routinely echo one another’s inner worlds. Yet they have never met.

Mathilde is a single mother of three who throws herself into her work and has always excelled in the workplace. But a single, seemingly insignificant altercation with her authoritative boss rapidly leads to disillusionment and despair.

Thibault is a paramedic who is despatched by the control room to wherever he is needed. He is lonely. But he is often struck by the conditions of poverty and isolation in which he find others in the city. For him, it accentuates the wretchedness rampant in this city of apparent light, wealth and success.

Each character wrangles with their thoughts and a growing sense of loss and powerlessness against the backdrop of a bustling city, which forms another pervasive character in this richly woven novel. One finds the characters’ impressions and their encounters with the city on almost every page of the novel.

The hustle and bustle of the roads, the streams of people rushing in all directions, and the clamour of public transport never ends. Thibault gets around in his car, while Mathilde uses the underground metro. In spite of the multitude of people, there is an overpowering sense of desolation and despair. The city is a "place of endless intersections where people never meet."

"Underground Time" is a knowing title. Prospective underground travellers are typically waiting in the hope of catching a train (or tram) that will take them from where they are to someplace they would rather be. In a sense, each character in the book is experiencing "underground time". Each of them is at a lonely juncture in their lives, but is waiting, in the hope of meeting someone with whom they can share their lives, who will transport them from this place of dejection and misery to a place of fulfilment, acceptance and joy.

The reader, too, is drawn into "underground time". As this prestigious French author proceeds to draw her characters, the reader waits in anticipation and hope of the characters meeting and moving on to a different place, where each will fulfil a need in the other for companionship and love. This was an easy, occasionally poetic read that provided a great sense of place, and some good food for thought.