The latest addition to my website isLydie Salvayre‘s La Médaille (The Award). The book consists of speeches given at a ceremony in a French car factory where medals are being handed out to long-serving/exemplary workers. The speeches are given alternately by a management representative and the employee. Management tries to show how much it has … Read more
The latest addition to my website is
The latest addition to my website is Maylis de Kerangal‘s Naissance d’un pont (Birth of a Bridge). As the title tells us it is about the building of a bridge, in this case in the fictitious US town of Coca. The project is led by the seasoned Georges Diderot and we follow his story as … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Colette‘s L’Ingénue libertine (The Innocent Libertine). This was originally published as two separate books but then combined into one in translation. It tells the story of Minne who, in the first book, is a fourteen tyear old schoolgirl in Paris, daughter of a widow. There has been gang … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Lydie Salvayre‘s La Puissance des mouches (The Power of Flies). The unnamed narrator is in prison for murder but who did he murder? In his one-sided discussions with a judge, lawyer, psychiatrist and prison guard we learn that he hated his father who brutalised our narrator and his … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Maylis de Kerangal‘s Corniche Kennedy [Kennedy Corniche]. The novel is set in Marseilles, primarily on a platform overlooking Keenedy Corniche and the sea. A group of teenagers go there to sunbathe and hang out but also to jump from various high ledges into the sea. They are joined … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono‘s Fragments d’un paradis (Fragments of a Paradise). Unusually for Giono, this novel is set not in the beautiful French countryside but at sea. We follow a maritime expedition that sets out in 1940, to escape the problems of civilisation as the captain will continue to remind … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mathieu Belezi‘s Attaquer la terre et le soleil [Attacking the Earth and the Sun]. This tells the story of a group of French people who are persuaded to go to Algeria and help colonise it, soon after the French had seized the country. Both from the point of … Read more
The latest addition to my website isLydie Salvayre‘s La Vie commune (Everyday Life). This novel tells the story of Suzanne Barette,a widow of thirty-two years who works as a secretary in the office of M. Meyer, a successful marketing manager. A new secretary has been appointed and Suzanne really does not like her – cheap … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Philippe Sollers‘ Femmes (Women). In this novel, Sollers moved away from his short experimental novel to a long everything novel. It is narrated by an American journalist, Will, who is partially based on Sollers, not least because he is writing a novel called Femmes (Women). Will is happily … Read more