Rate this book

03 (2010)

by Jean-Christophe Valtat(Favorite Author)

3.56 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0374100217 (ISBN13: 9780374100216)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

review 1: Three stars for a dodgy translation, unless the French is this clumsy. However this is still worth reading. A slim, poetical volume spoken from the perspective of an adolescent boy, disaffected with modern suburban life, who become fascinated with a local girl with Down's syndrome. He never speaks to her, not a lot happens, there is almost no plot, but the book still works. Unique, provocative and haunting.
review 2: An utterly curious little book. The story, such as it is, unfolds in one long stream of consciousness, with no break from beginning to end. The narrator, looking back, describes his infatuation with another student, ruminating on love, music, and life in the wretched French town of Montperilleux. Comparisons to the style of Thomas Berhnard are not... more far off the mark--actually, one could almost imagine the narrator as a very young Bernhard, before he became angry and self-imprisoned in loathing. This narrator is rather charming, though, and his observations are amusing, if rather light. A very brief but engrossing book, a fine new voice in French literature. less

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