Survive! Survive! transports readers to September 1935, to glorious, tragic times in the company of Ti-Lou and "la Duchesse" Édouard, whose sparkling exchanges hide indissoluble pain; to sombre, twilight times with Victoire and Télesphore and between Josaphat and his ill-fated daughter. "How to survive?" they all ask, inextricably caught in life's cycle of lost illusions and forgotten dreams.

The series closes in August 1941 with Crossing the Gulf of Misfortune, when a grieving Nana and her family must share an apartment with Victoire and Édouard as well as with Albertine and her children. Outside this unbearably crowded household, war rages and rationing rules over daily life. But in a year, in May 1942, Nana – the Fat Woman Next Door – seven months pregnant, will open the fabulous Chronicles of the Plateau-Mont-Royal ...