Solstice d’hiver is Basara’s only novel that could possibly be described as a love story. Anyone who knows this author’s work knows that the whole love-and-sex thing is usually dispatched with in an ironic sentence or two. This time, it takes up the whole book, although that doesn’t stop the author from saying:… I distrust novels about love. They are either pure lies or pure horror. Yet this story, despite being filled with lust, never reaches that point, because we never find out if there really was a physical relationship between Nana and the narrator. The latter starts out saying so, then says he can’t remember, but maybe, well probably, before concluding, like between any brother and sister. So who is Nana, that elusive object of love, and subject of this novel? She’s a sort of Frankenstein who incarnates Basara’s fascination with feminine archetypes. She is complex, contradictory, multi-facetted. She is both beautiful and cruel, like a praying mantis. She is lewd, but may be frigid, a metaphysician attracted to sainthood. She is corrupt and murderous, as well as intelligent and creative, a talented poet and essayist. The only thing she doesn’t know how to do is to take the Virgin Mary as her role model.