A short, easy work of auto-fiction. In 1985, the 18-year old Philippe Besson arrives on the Ile de Re, where, like every year, he will spend his vacatA short, easy work of auto-fiction. In 1985, the 18-year old Philippe Besson arrives on the Ile de Re, where, like every year, he will spend his vacation hanging out with his local summer buddies Francois and Christophe. This year, though, their group expands to include Nicolas, a relative newcomer to the island, and Marc and Alice, a brother and sister from Paris.
The nostalgia is unmistakable: this is supposed to be a summer of beach and ice creams, beers and dancing, of flirting and lazing away the hot days (all pre-mobile phones and other screens, of course). But the book's cover made it very clear that someone would disappear. And sure enough, one of the little group of friends disappears in the middle of a birthday celebration in a local nightclub, and this signals the end of the author's innocence.
Well written, in a simple style, but ultimately not very interesting. We know from page 1 what will happen, and there is not a lot going on apart from the description of how these teens spend their days, with minimal foreshadowing. There is also no resolution - the book just ends. The reflections about the end of innocence are not particularly original. So in the end: a forgettable book. ...more
Very cute story about a hairstylist in a second-rate hair salon in a provincial French town who starts to read a book by Proust left behind by a clienVery cute story about a hairstylist in a second-rate hair salon in a provincial French town who starts to read a book by Proust left behind by a client. This transforms her life in more ways than one, especially when she is invited to read Proust aloud to an elderly lady.
A little ode to the transformative power of literature, centered around one of the most daunting French writers.
Very cute, very heartwarming, very feel-good....more
Winter in Parma. Rain, wind, mist... and dead bodies. Inspector Soleri has to deal with the suicide of a young Romanian and the stabbing of Elmo BoselWinter in Parma. Rain, wind, mist... and dead bodies. Inspector Soleri has to deal with the suicide of a young Romanian and the stabbing of Elmo Boselli, ex-leader of the 1968 student revolt, now a disappointed man. The investigation focuses largely on Elmo's former comrades in the revolutionary movement. Either they have sold out, or they live in the past, endlessly reliving their glory days on the barricades. For these folks, everything is political. Does that mean that the motive for the murder is also political? Or is there a more personal story behind the crime?
Investigating Elmo's backstory involves a lot of driving back and forth across the mountains to the seaside town where Elmo had owned an apartment, which he had lent to his old girlfriend Alexandra, the girl who had accompanied him on the obligatory 1970s trip to India.
The investigation seems to be a pretext for the dispensing of world-weary wisdom, both by the commissaire and by the former Elmo entourage. But I did like the descriptions of the rain and wind, especially since the temperature was in the 90s while I read this. ...more
A disappointment. This is a novel based on the historical figure of Menie Gregoire, who pioneered a call-in radio show specifically for a female audieA disappointment. This is a novel based on the historical figure of Menie Gregoire, who pioneered a call-in radio show specifically for a female audience. This was France, around 1967, and despite the winds of change blowing through the Western world, many women were still caught in antiquated attitudes and expectations. And so Menie Gregoire created the first forum where average French women could share their worries and ask for advice. So many of the questions she received had to do with topics like birth control and frigidity, that she started a second radio show specifically on those topics. The shows went off the air in 1981, but not without having a tremendous influence on French society.
Unfortunately, the book is boring. The story of Menie jumps from a short section of her young years (tomboy chafing against the strictures of her Catholic upbringing) to the 1960s (elegant wife of successful civil servant elbows her way into writing pieces for a magazine, then gets invited to host a radio show). The second narrative strand is that of two sisters, Mireille and Suzanne, whose lives are positively influenced by Menie and her show. And finally, the main narrator of the book, Esther, is researching and then writing a book about Menie, and comes to realize that some of the problems women faced in the 1960s, like domestic abuse, still persist today.
The book felt repetitive and didactic - how many times did we have to read about Menie's parties and her connections with "Le Tout-Paris"? How many times did we have to hear about the impact her show had? For me, the most interesting parts were the handful of letters from listeners that were reproduced in the book - my understanding is that these are genuine letters from the Menie Gregoire archives.
Bottom line: despite the lovely cover, the enthusiastic blurbs and the promising topic, not really a success....more
I had not realized, when I requested this book from the library, that it was no more than a slim (39-page) story, a philosophical treatment of an anecI had not realized, when I requested this book from the library, that it was no more than a slim (39-page) story, a philosophical treatment of an anecdote from the author's life. In the late 20th century, the 54-year old Annie had a relationship with a university student 30 years her junior. For him it's a passionate, tortured affair. From Ernaux's side, it turns her into a palimpsest. The fact that the student lives in Rouen, where she herself had lived, loved, studied and had an abortion decades earlier, serves as Proust's madeleine: she revisits old haunts, relives old memories, and reflects on her past - even as she initiates her lover into tastes and experiences that foreshadow his eventual mature adulthood. The book and the relationship end when Ernaux decides to write about her long-ago abortion, the memoir that became "L'evenement".
This was my first experience with Annie Ernaux, and I was struck by the elegance of her language. Very well written! And it was a seductive experience, to be invited so easily into another person's life. At the same time, the author's detached tone, both towards her own past and her lover's present, left me a little uneasy. Did she even like the young man? Why did she start this relationship? Surely the initial trigger must have been something more passionate, emotional than a cold-blooded decision to turn a romance into a time machine?
The reflections about how May-December romances are accepted when the older party is a man, but are considered scandalous when it's an older woman with a younger man, were unremarkable. There's not much more that can be said on that topic, I guess.
The second of the two Eugene Tarpon mysteries/thrillers. Our hard-boiled private detective is asked to look into the disappearance of one Philippine, The second of the two Eugene Tarpon mysteries/thrillers. Our hard-boiled private detective is asked to look into the disappearance of one Philippine, a young woman who works as a braille typist at an institution for the blind. Well... that may be overstating the case, because the same cop who refers the case to him admonishes him not to make too much of an effort. Is that because the girl's mother is considered a cranky old lady or because there is something more unsavory going on?
Within hours the situation becomes deliciously complicated. People are getting killed. Villains abound. Tarpon pursues and is pursued. A photograph indicates a potential link between Philippine and a notorious French collaborator during WWII - but others swear that the man is dead. The institute for the blind and a rural new age retreat come into play. As does an overripe femme fatale, a portrait of Adolf Hitler, and Tarpon's two best friend: a chess-playing ex-journalist and a stuntwoman. All of whom address each other by the formal "vous", even when driving a getaway car, hiding from the police, or being shot at.
Murder and mayhem - yet very entertaining. ...more
Not my favorite of the Aurel series. Our hapless hero is called to the court of an imaginary mountain micro-state (think: Liechtenstein) and is asked Not my favorite of the Aurel series. Our hapless hero is called to the court of an imaginary mountain micro-state (think: Liechtenstein) and is asked to locate the missing monarch, Princess Hilda. This leads to some rather frenetic hopping back and forth across Europe, to the princess' Paris apartment and her Sicilian retreat. The princess is eventually found but turns out to be entangled in an unsavory extortion scheme. All of this allows plenty of opportunities for Aurel to mishandle royal protocol, play on superb grand pianos, and drink plenty of Tokay. And, of course, to develop a vague romantic yearning for one of Princess Hilda's assistants....more
I had expected more of this biography of the painter Nicolas De Stael. This is the type of book where the reader is provided with more information aboI had expected more of this biography of the painter Nicolas De Stael. This is the type of book where the reader is provided with more information about the subject's ancestors in the 16th century, than about his formative years. Lots of adjectives, little hard data. Lots of quotations about Art and Painting from Nicolas de Stael and his artistic friends, but I suspect they were carefully selected to contribute to the myth of the tormented artist.
There were too many threads that were left unconnected, for me. He spent several years in Brussels, being fostered/hosted by friends of his late mother, to the point that he called them "maman" and "papa" - yet these folks suddenly disappear from the story. Did he break with them completely over his choice of career? How do we reconcile the image of the devoted husband with that of a man who remarries within a few weeks after his first companion's death? And what, exactly, was the nature of the fracas over his work being figurative vs. abstract?
I had expected more from a book that had received the Prix du Quai des Orfevres. This is one of those police procedurals that is more about the policeI had expected more from a book that had received the Prix du Quai des Orfevres. This is one of those police procedurals that is more about the police officers' thoughts and emotions and private lives than about detective work. It starts promisingly enough, with the body of a down-and-out found in a pool in the Tuileries in Paris. A little routine detective work leads to the identification of the man, and the main question about his recent life is why he had noted down the phone number of an organization that allows adopted children to find their birth parents.
In parallel, the same group of police officers is investigating a series of strange disappearances: three women have vanished off the streets of Paris in broad daylight.
Well, it doesn't take an experienced reader to figure out that these 2 cases will somehow become linked, and the ending was not a big surprise.
Flat writing, uninteresting characters, and a boring sub-plot about how the main character, the crusty old policeman in charge of the cases, feels irritated and threatened by the assignment of a psychologist to the group - only to come to accept her value grudgingly....more
A story that perfectly reflects the time of its writing, the decadence of the Fin-de-Siecle. Hugues is an inconsolable widower, who has chosen to liveA story that perfectly reflects the time of its writing, the decadence of the Fin-de-Siecle. Hugues is an inconsolable widower, who has chosen to live in the provincial town of Bruges because its empty streets, quiet canals and drizzly weather perfectly reflect his morbid inner life. When Hugues is not daydreaming over the relics of his dead wife- her portraits, her old dresses, and above all, a braid of her golden hair-he walks around Bruges, wallowing in his loss. The only person he talks to is his pious Flemish servant, Barbe.
This all changes when he meets a young woman who could be his dead wife's double. And since this is the Fin-de-Siecle, the woman, a dancer at the opera, is soon installed in a house and living at Hugues' expense. Then comes the day of the Annual Blood Procession in Bruges, when the entire town comes to life. Jane invites herself to Hugues' house... this has to end badly and it does end badly.
I liked the book. The concept of a state of mourning that is so prolonged and intense that it leads to a life of virtual seclusion is very old-fashioned nowadays. But it seems to have been part and parcel of the social culture of the 19th century - think of Victorian mourning jewelry, or Queen Victoria herself, wearing mourning for decades after the death of Prince Albert. Hugues' self-absorbed wanderings through Bruges also resonated with me. But what I liked most of all was the description of Bruges itself, as a protagonist in the story. The streets, canals, churches, and especially the church bells of Bruges, all influence Hugues' mood and thinking. In the beginning, they are balm to his solitude. Later, when he starts to feel guilty about his liaison with Jane, the church bells seem to torture him. And in the end, the Blood Procession is the trigger for the fatal ending.
It's a short novella that includes - novelty at the time!- grainy black-and-white pictures of Bruges at the time, most of them showing empty streets or canals. My favorite, though, was the picture of the Beguines in their white caps. I think the last Beguine died in 2013, so that was truly a glimpse of a lost world....more
I do enjoy my occasional forays into Modiano-land, the mysterious universe where the narrator's memory is both fallible and vivid, where people drift I do enjoy my occasional forays into Modiano-land, the mysterious universe where the narrator's memory is both fallible and vivid, where people drift in and out of each other's lives, where landmarks disappear without a trace, and where the shadow of WWII is never far away.
This is one of his earlier books, and I found it to be less elliptical than his later books. Or perhaps I've been trained, through the reading of these other books, not to expect to connect all the dots, to accept a certain level of opaqueness and uncertainty? Whatever the case may be, I knew that the best way to enjoy this book was to allow myself to be taken along the narrative, not expecting that everything would make sense.
The narrator thinks back to the summer when he was 18 (in 1960 or thereabouts), when he fled from Paris to mingle with the holiday-makers in a small lakeside town close to Switzerland. It's a worrisome time: the war in Algeria is turning France into a police state, and in the USA movie stars like Errol Flynn and Marilyn Monroe are dying. The narrator meets Yvonne, a local starlet, and her slightly older friend Dr. Meinthe, and soon he is absorbed into their lives. Much of his time with Yvonne is spent lounging around, swimming in the lake and going to the Casino or bars in the evening, the idyllic days of young love. Meinthe is a more disquieting character. A barely closeted homosexual with an alter ego as "Astrid, queen of the Belgians", he seems to nurse violent and unexplained grudges against several local men. And when Yvonne and the narrator spend the night at his home, Villa Triste, the torpor that overcomes them in that environment is shattered only by the mysterious phone messages that arrive for Meinthe. Is he involved in the police brutality against the sympathizers with Algeria's war of independence? Or somehow active in an underground network? The narrator (and the reader) is doomed to never find out.
As in many of Modiano's novels, the identity and antecedents of the characters are unclear. The narrator, for instance, is living under an assumed name and pretends, alternatively, to be of Russian or Egyptian origin. Is this the behavior of a budding con man or of a frightened teenager who doesn't want to be sent to Algeria? Yvonne and Meinthe also avoid talking about their past.
Some parts of this book, especially the party-turned-orgy that Yvonne and Meinthe take the narrator to, were reminiscent of "Le Grand Meaulnes", another book about yearning for one's lost youth and doomed love.
I love the Maigret stories, but this is not my favorite. Perhaps it's because the plot was too far-fetched for my taste: Jean Maura, a rich young man,I love the Maigret stories, but this is not my favorite. Perhaps it's because the plot was too far-fetched for my taste: Jean Maura, a rich young man, convinces Maigret to travel to New York because he's concerned that his father, John Maura, might be in fear of his life. Jean disappears the second the boat docks in New York, and John Maura and his smooth secretary McGill, don't seem pleased at all to see Maigret appear. Rather than being fobbed off with a fat check, Maigret does a little detecting of his own into the antecedents of the mysterious French-American John Maura. His contacts with the local police are helpful in this regard, but otherwise he doesn't really enjoy his stay in New York.
One of the pleasures of the Maigret novels is the atmosphere, both of the locality of the investigation, and the milieu of the suspects. Whether it's the criminal underworld, the petite bourgeoisie ,/I> or the higher levels of society, Maigret finds his man (or woman) by psychology rather than clue-hunting. But this works best when the books are set in France, especially Paris. This excursion into New York was not particularly successful from a descriptive point of view, and Maigret's bad temper and his sense of futility of his trip communicate themselves to the reader, who ends up wanting to get on the boat back to France with the Chief Inspector. ...more
An early Simenon (1932) , and one in which we can see the first sketch of the personality type that will become Inspector Maigret, in the character ofAn early Simenon (1932) , and one in which we can see the first sketch of the personality type that will become Inspector Maigret, in the character of Captain Petersen. He's responsible for a ship that takes cargo and a few passengers from Hamburg to Norway. But right from the get-go, he has an uncomfortable, almost superstitious feeling that something will go wrong. His third officer is a brand-new graduate from the sailing school in Delfzijl, a 19-year old rookie. His new stoker seems ...not quite right. As for his passengers, apart from a Norwegian businessman the captain has known for years, he has to wonder what the vampish Miss Storm and the taciturn young German want with a trip to Norway in the winter. And what about passenger Erickson, who seems to be invisible? As for the important German functionary who joined the ship late and who insists on staying in his cabin... he is soon found murdered, thus fulfilling Captain Petersen's sense of foreboding.
This is a suspense thriller rather than a classic mystery novel. Very atmospheric! As the ship makes its way through the icy seas towards remote coastal towns in Norway, Captain Petersen has to deal with a nightmarish situation on board. He suspects this is all somehow related to the morphine overdose of a young girl in Paris and the subsequent flight of the man responsible. On top of that, Mr Vriens, his teenaged third officer, has fallen head over heels in love with Miss Storm and is ready to lie, cheat and steal to support her unlikely stories. But then a storm approaches, and Captain Petersen has to do some actual sea-faring rather than detecting.
Just like Inspector Maigret, Captain Petersen is sensitive to moods, to gestures, to the things that are left unspoken. He moves in a fog of vague suspicions while his ship moves cautiously through the fog over the seas. The best part of the book, for me, though, was the atmosphere of life on a small steamer fighting its way through the seas towards the arctic circle, bringing mail and provisions and taking back cod oil and animal pelts....more
I had understood this to be a mystery, based on the character of a bookstore owner finding an handbag containing a red notebook with random thoughts, I had understood this to be a mystery, based on the character of a bookstore owner finding an handbag containing a red notebook with random thoughts, and setting out to find its owner. Bookstore! Notebook with actual handwritten notes! Unknown woman to track down in Paris! Exactly the type of light literature (and light book) to take in my own handbag to an event where I had good hopes of being able to hide in the bathroom for reading breaks.
Well, it was light literature allright, but more of the romance kind than of the mystery kind. Our hero, 40-ish, divorced, baffled by his teenage daughter, kindly seeks to return a handbag discarded by a thief to its rightful owner. But of course the wallet and phone have disappeared, and so his only clue is a red notebook in which the owner has noted her likes and dislikes, her daily musings. And a book by Patrick Modiano, in which the writer had written a note to "Laure". And so, armed with this meager set of data, he sets out to find "Laure".
This has all the makings of a charming movie. I can see Audrey Tatou playing Laure without any forcing of the imagination. Feel-good novel for secret romantics!...more
An interesting novelistic exploration of, depending on your point of view: the perils of the hedonic treadmill, or: the perils of not knowing what to An interesting novelistic exploration of, depending on your point of view: the perils of the hedonic treadmill, or: the perils of not knowing what to do with your life. Or perhaps it's even simpler: an indictment of the society of consumption? As the book was published in 1965 and ends with a quote by Karl Marx (that I can't make sense of), perhaps it's just a reflection of the pre-hippie Zeitgeist ?
The first chapter opens with a loving, detailed description of the type of apartment all intellectuals or wanna-be intellectuals dream of. Inbuilt bookcases! Comfortable leather sofas! Inviting desks with suitable lighting! Apart from the mention of ashtrays and a record player, this sounds very appealing, even to the reader of 2023. But the use of the conditional tense "There would be.." is soon explained: this represents the dream apartment of a young couple, Sylvie and Jerome. This pair has abandoned their studies to pursue the easy money and undemanding lifestyle of free-lance market researchers. Yes, they are the people who accost shoppers in malls to ask them about their preferences in shampoo, shoe polish and other mundane aspects of daily life. But Sylvie and Jerome want more. More specifically, they want to be rich and they want to have nice things. Their first apartment, which seemed so attractive after their student lodgings, soon begins to look and feel cramped, ugly, inconvenient.
The book describes Sylvie and Jerome's vague dreams of having more, and the half-hearted attempts to achieve that (short of settling down to a steady job). Endless window-shopping, or picking up the desirable English-style clothing at flea-markets, reading the lifestyle supplement in L'Express. They hang out with a group of like-minded young folks whom they consider their friends.
But after a few years, the friendships start to falter as more and more friends settle into a steady job, a bourgeois existence. Sylvie and Jerome decide to get out of their rut by the traditional French flight towards orientalism: moving to Tunisia. Alas, they find themselves assigned to a dusty provincial town where there is absolutely nothing for them to do. This is also the only spot in the book where Sylvie and Jerome are treated as individuals, rather than as Sylvie-and-Jerome, a couple, a unit. That is because only Sylvie can find a job there, condemning Jerome to even more boredom and aimlessness. After less than a year, they flee back home to the Hexagon. (This episode may have been inspired by Georges Perec's own year in Tunisia with his wife.)
I enjoyed the book and had to smile at the description of the couple's social circle. Don't we all know people whose conversation is wholly focused on the best food to eat, the best places to go, the best stuff to acquire?
In the end, though, I wasn't clear on what the author was trying to tell us. Was the message a caution :"Don't believe that material things will bring happiness!" or was it an exhortation :"If you want something, work for it!"? My inclination, in the end, is to consider this a story about a specific couple, with a specific lifestyle, rather than a sociological work-in-the-guise-of-a-novel....more
Josee Ash is trapped in her marriage with the pathologically jealous Alan. Trapped as in: he won't let her leave the apartment; she has no job and no Josee Ash is trapped in her marriage with the pathologically jealous Alan. Trapped as in: he won't let her leave the apartment; she has no job and no other place to go. But then the American millionaire Julius A. Cram, whom the couple had met casually at a dinner party, intervenes, and with the help of his hefty chauffeur, physically marches Josee out of the claustrophobic apartment.
Julius has taken an interest in our passive heroine, and within 48 h she has both a job and a new studio. Nothing is asked in return for these services, and Josee gratefully accepts the many invitations for dinners, shows, concerts that come her way via Julius. When Alan is hospitalized in New York, Josee flies over to see him, and realizes that he's still as manipulative as ever. Julius proposes a restoring week in Nassau, and that's the first time that Josee begins to wonder about her wonderful, altruistic friend.
And then Josee meets a young man her own age, a country veterinarian, and falls in love. And to her surprise (but not the reader's), it is revealed that Julius has been paying for both her apartment and her salary, biding his time until Josee would agree to marry him.
I wouldn't say this is one of Francoise Sagan's best. Julius A. Cram is a caricature of the quietly powerful American, the self-made man who is fascinated by French culture. The romance between Josee and her veterinarian is romance-novel type stuff. And one has to wonder about a woman who manages to become the object of an unhealthy obsession of two rich men in sequence. Josee is in many ways a typical Sagan heroine : upper-middle class, attractive but not super-young, entangled with several men, going about in Le Tout Paris yet secretly bored and disgusted by the social posturing and superficiality of that milieu. But still I enjoyed the book, probably because I just enjoyed reading about how that layer of society lived in 1974 : lots of dinners and evening entertainments, jet-setting back and forth across the pond, cigarettes and bouquets and tearooms....more
Short novel about the artistic and professional challenges encountered by a Oualid, a Tunisian millennial. Born and raised in Naboul, the narrator dreShort novel about the artistic and professional challenges encountered by a Oualid, a Tunisian millennial. Born and raised in Naboul, the narrator dreams of living and working in France, which he calls "the Pole" because of its magnetic attraction. His ambition is to work in the theatre, and after studies in Tunis, he manages to get accepted into a theatre program in Montpellier in France. But the lot-in-life of immigrants or even scholarship recipients from the Maghreb is not easy in France, and our protagonist even ends up living on the streets for a while. Back in Tunisia, living with his parents, he manages to get a job at the "Call Center for Dead Authors", a vaguely cultural initiative aiming to make the great French authors more accessible to the Tunisian public. This leads to more mishaps, which eventually, after many detours, including a slightly kafkaesque experience in a police station, lead to Oualid and his girlfriend managing to create their first artistic endeavor : a play based on the short-lived Call Center.
The book underscores the "disquiet" (to borrow a term from Fernando Pessoa) in Tunisia during the years 1980-2015, but also, the "can't win" experience of Maghrebins in a France that is still ridden with racist and/or neocolonialist attitudes. At the same time, there is a growing suspicion in Tunisia for those who have lived in France. The narrator wants to live in France, work in France, speak French - and that is an automatic cause for ostracism, suspicion and even police harassment when he's back in Tunisia, working on his play with his French girlfriend. And this despite the fact that Oualid is essentially a-political and just wants to get on with his artistic work.
This is one of those books that makes it possible for the reader to enter into a world different from their own, and as such I recommend it. Plus, one just has to love the cover illustration and the title!
Frothy little fantasy about a tiny island off Brittany, which becomes the refuge of a world-weary translator. Alas, his editor back in Paris is losingFrothy little fantasy about a tiny island off Brittany, which becomes the refuge of a world-weary translator. Alas, his editor back in Paris is losing patience with the long delay in the translation of Nabokov's "Ada" and hounds him with telephone calls and letters (the book is set in the early 1970s). Finally the other islanders are cajoled by a local lady (with the significant maiden name of "de Saint-Exupery") into helping him.
There isn't much plot, and the author has allowed his poetic imagination to range freely over the crags and cliffs and shrimping grounds of the island. Some of his images are quite creative, such as when he compares translators to corsairs, who capture a ship (a book), eliminate its crew (the original language) and make it their own and put their own pirate crew in (words in the language into which the book is translated). Or when he compares words to cats : they live around humans but tend to go their own way. Or when he describes the majestic hotel in Switzerland where Nabokov spent his last years to a big ocean liner.
I enjoyed the playfulness of the author and his unmistakable love of words and language. ...more
Victor Coste is a police officer in Saint-Denis, or district 93, the high-crime area north of Paris. A couple of bizarre murders or attempted murders Victor Coste is a police officer in Saint-Denis, or district 93, the high-crime area north of Paris. A couple of bizarre murders or attempted murders come his way - an emasculated drug dealer, a carbonized junkie, a carefully exsanguinated dealer. Each new body comes with an anonymous letter mentioning "Code 93" and a reference to an earlier, unsolved murder of a marginalized person in the district. When Coste starts to investigate these earlier cases, he realizes rapidly that they all somehow disappeared off the crime statistics. Unfortunately, a journalist has figured out the same link, and it all centers somehow on the death of a drug-addicted girl from the upper classes.
I think the book had potential, but the plot fell flat because there was very little detection going on - the author suddenly decided to tell us who the murderer was and how he went about things. The psychology was equally bland. The tough cop, the camaraderie among cops, the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie .. all very crowd-pleasing, but lacking in originality....more
A short and rather superficial biography of Francoise Sagan, in the context of a series about Paris as an incubator for artistic expression. Well, FraA short and rather superficial biography of Francoise Sagan, in the context of a series about Paris as an incubator for artistic expression. Well, Francoise Sagan did live in Paris, on and off, but the city never figured much in her books, or at least not when compared to, say, Patrick Modiano or Julio Cortazar. So the book seems contrived and one can see the author straining to find something to say about Francoise Sagan's links with the city of Paris....more
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