The next 2017 Prix Goncourt nominee is “Taba-Taba”, a rather long novel about the history of author Patrick Deville and his family.
Sadly, for me, the most interesting part of the novel was the first chapter, which talks about the curious hospital where a young Patrick Deville spent his early childhood years.
As for the rest… I’m not sure how Patrick Deville managed to make a novel with such an interesting enough premise so utterly dry and unreadable.
What I believe Deville attempted to do was show how past, present and future history often collide and intertwine – how the same path can be walked by different family members at different points in history; how certain world events can take place at the same date; how random people can collide, out of providence, and create a family, how one event in one part of the world can have unintended repercussions in a completely different part of the world, and at a completely different time, etc. etc…
However, what terrible execution (at least for me!) Passage after passage where Deville simply rattles off historical dates and facts in a manner more off-putting than a badly-written textbook. Then account after account of Deville’s encounters with various famous artists and writers…(and no, nothing interesting really happens during the encounters…all Deville really does is rattle on and on about how he met so-and-so in such-and-such place…)
I’m not sure if anyone outside of Deville’s immediate acquaintance would have the interest (or might I even say, the tolerance) to bear this torture of a novel.
It took me almost two months to persevere through… all the way to the extremely anti-climatic finale ending with Taba-Taba…
Oh Prix Goncourt, why?
My rating: * star (poor)
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