Everyday Life, as I read it, is about something larger. ItТs a study in the alienation that results not from office conditions but from the isolation that leads people to overinvest emotionally in work. Suzanne is the sort of woman Americans used to call an Уoffice wife.Ф Faced with a rival, she reacts as many women do to a threat of infidelity, except that her behavior is much more sinister than sifting through pockets and credit-card receipts. She is a hard Ц maybe impossible Ц character to like. But Salvayre, writing with a Cartesian spareness, makes you see that part of the problem is that sheТs smarter and funnier than others. Suzanne is so enraged when the new secretary posts a УNo SmokingФ sign that, alone in her apartment, she canТt sleep and composes darkly comic counter-signs. One reads: УLETS OUTLAW THE SALE OF buy cheap cigarettes: PEOPLE SHOULD DIE OF POVERTY, NOT CANCER.Ф Such humor wouldnТt have raised eyebrows a generation or two ago. By todayТs standards, itТs subversive, and just what you would expect from Dalkey Archive.