Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Too Close to the Edge
WORK NOTES: trans by Emily Boyce
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 7/4/1949-3/5/2010
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: French
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/25/panda-theory-pascal-garnier-review * https://litreactor.com/columns/why-the-fck-arent-you-reading-pascal-garnier * http://www.npr.org/2015/11/04/454582577/brief-and-brisk-the-newly-translated-boxes-is-an-existential-pleasure * http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2013/10/bleak-existentialism-grisly-crime-french-author-pascal-garnier-hall-of-famer-brian-greene
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married (divorced); married; had children.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and painter. Previously, worked for women’s magazines.
WRITINGS
Also, author of short-story collections and children’s books, as well as many other books in French.
SIDELIGHTS
Pascal Garnier was a French writer and painter who died in 2010. He wrote novels, children’s books, and collections of short stories in the French language.
The Panda Theory
The first of Garnier’s books to be translated to English is The Panda Theory. It features a protagonist who is known as Gabriel, who is resisting a strong impulse to commit murder.
A writer in Publishers Weekly commented: “This novel is dark enough to sink the hook deep into fans of noir.” Henry Krempels, critic on the Observer (London, England) Web site, asserted: “This often bleak, often funny and never predictable narrative is written in a precise style.”
How's the Pain? and The A26
In How’s the Pain?, an ailing exterminator named Simon hires a young driver named Bernard to transport him to perform a job on the coast. Over time, it is revealed that Simon is an exterminator of humans.
A26 tells of a difficult relationship between two siblings. “For those with a taste for Georges Simenon or Patricia Highsmith, Garnier’s recently translated oeuvre will strike a chord,” remarked Emma Hagestadt on the Independent (London, England) Web site.
Moon in a Dead Eye and The Front Seat Passenger
The Sudres, a married couple, discover strange goings-on in their new retirement community in Moon in a Dead Eye. “This was a strange book, in a good way,” commented Gloria Feit in Reviewer’s Bookwatch.
In The Front Seat Passenger, Garnier tells the story of a husband who learns of his wife’s affair when she dies in a car crash. Feit, the Reviewer’s Bookwatch contributor, asserted: “This book … is a riveting glimpse into another odd world from this author, and is recommended.” A writer on the Little Bookness Lane Web site praised “the author’s skill of cramming such a vibrant, brilliantly layered world into such a short page span.” Jose Ignacio, reviewer on the A Crime Is Afoot Web site, suggested: “Garnier is able to assemble a story that is not going to leave the reader indifferent. With an unadorned but effective writing, Garnier creates a tense atmosphere that prevents us to abandon its reading.”
The Islanders and Boxes
The Islanders finds Olivier reconnecting with family friends and interacting with a mysterious guest while in Versailles for a funeral. Writing on the Jettison Cocoon Web site, Cary Watson commented: “At times Garnier can go overboard with seeing the world through dystopia-tinted glasses, almost to the point of parody, but his misanthropy is always delivered with a poetic zeal that keeps his novels palatable and energetic rather than dreary and pretentious.” A reviewer on the France Today Web site suggested: “Garnier weaves an intricate web of compelling storytelling that’ll have you hooked.”
In Boxes, Brice tentatively opens up to his neighbors after his wife disappears. Referring to Garnier, Brian Greene, writer at CriminalElement.com, remarked: “His books are easily approachable yet ultimately disturbing. He makes you comfortable with blasé descriptions of his characters’ doings, then he makes the room in your brain go spinning when he describes abrupt, extreme actions these seemingly sleepwalking people take. He drops brain-bending, jarring lines and passages like they’re afterthoughts.” A critic on the Publishers Weekly Web site suggested: “This one will help reinforce his cult status among noir fans.” John Powers, contributor to the National Public Radio Web site, commented: “Garnier makes bleakness pleasurable. It’s fun to inhabit such a powerful mental atmosphere, however dark it may be, when it’s created with originality and style. And it certainly is with Garnier, whose books start off seeming simple, then sneak up on you.”
Too Close to the Edge and The Eskimo Solution
Eliette, an elderly widow, accepts a mysterious stranger’s offer of a ride after her car stops running in Too Close to the Edge. Jeff Noon, reviewer in Spectator, suggested: “This is a short, sharp shocker, laced with keen philosophical insight amid the blood and guts.” Greene, writing again on CriminalElement.com, commented: “There is also a strong atmospheric tone to much of Too Close to the Edge. Some of this ambience is sensuous, and some of it is sinister. That duality is an essential quality of Garnier’s writing.”
In The Eskimo Solution, Louis, a crime writer, offers to kill his friends’ parents. Writing on the Bookbag Web site, John Lloyd commented: “This isn’t an abject failure–it bounds with ideas and blackness and Louis’s nonchalance is always pleasant, but against the rest of M. Garnier’s oeuvre, it does stand as a widely missed opportunity.” Greene, the contributor to CriminalElement.com, stated: “It’s both welcoming and disturbing—a story that is easy to get into and stay with, yet one that also messes with your head. It’s bleak in a knowing and darkly humorous way.” “Despite the very dark nature, Garnier writes beautifully. He captures the scenes in the book perfectly,” asserted Jeff Grim on the Collected Miscellany Web site. On her self-titled blog, Jemima Pett called the book “somewhat surreal, and potentially confusing, but then that’s what adds to the intrigue” Margaret Cannon, reviewer on the Globe and Mail Web site, remarked: “It’s short, sleek, beautifully written and well translated.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2014, Thomas Gaughan, review of The Panda Theory, p. 52.
Publishers Weekly, December 2, 2013, review of The Panda Theory, p. 65.
Reviewer’s Bookwatch, March, 2015, Gloria Feit, review of The Front Seat Passenger; March, 2015, Gloria Feit, review of Moon in a Dead Eye.
Spectator, July 2, 2016, Jeff Noon, review of Too Close to the Edge, p. 47.
World Literature Today, September-October, 2015, review of The A26, p. 63.
ONLINE
Belgravia Books, http://belgraviabooks.com/ (February 13, 2017), article by author.
Bookbag, http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/ (February 13, 2016), John Lloyd, review of The Eskimo Solution.
Bookfangirling, http://bookfangirling.blogspot.com/ (February 2, 2015), review of The Panda Theory.
Collected Miscellany, http://collectedmiscellany.com/ (November 28, 2016), Jeff Grim, review of The Eskimo Solution.
A Crime Is Afoot, https://jiescribano.wordpress.com/ (October 5, 2016), Jose Ignacio, review of The Front Seat Passenger.
Crimepieces, https://crimepieces.com/ (February 13, 2014), review of The Front Seat Passenger.
CriminalElement.com, http://www.criminalelement.com/ (May 13, 2015), Brian Greene, review of Boxes; (April 1, 2016), Brian Greene, review of Too Close to the Edge; (September 14, 2016), Brian Greene, review of The Eskimo Solution.
Euro Crime, http://eurocrime.blogspot.com/ (October 24, 2012), review of How’s the Pain?
France Today, https://www.francetoday.com/ (March 20, 2016), review of The Islanders.
Globe and Mail Online, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ (November 22, 2016), Margaret Cannon, review of The Eskimo Solution.
Independent Online (London, England), http://www.independent.co.uk/ (February 8, 2013), Emma Hagestadt, review of The A 26.
Jemima Pett Blog, http://jemimapett.com/ (September 10, 2016), review of The Eskimo Solution.
Jettison Cocoon, http://www.jettisoncocooon.com/ (December 21, 2015), Cary Watson, review of The Islanders.
Lit Reactor, https://litreactor.com/ (July 28, 2015), Keith Rawson, article about author.
Little Bookness Lane, https://littlebooknesslane.wordpress.com/ (June 6, 2016), review of The Front Seat Passenger.
My Book Self, https://mybookself.org/ (May 23, 2016), review of Too Close to the Edge.
National Public Radio Online, http://www.npr.org/ (November 4, 2015), John Powers, review of Boxes.
Observer Online (Lndon, England), https://www.theguardian.com/ (March 25, 2012), Henry Krempels, review of The Panda Theory.
Portland Book Review, http://portlandbookreview.com/ (October 1, 2015), Sarah Hutchins, review of The Islanders.
Publishers Weekly Online, http://www.publishersweekly.com/ (August 17, 2015), review of Boxes.
Pascal Garnier in his own words
Pascal Garnier in His Own WordsPascal Garnier, who died in March 2010, was a talented novelist, short story writer, children’s author and painter. From his home in the mountains of the Ardèche, he wrote fiction in a noir palette with a cast of characters drawn from ordinary provincial life. Though his writing is often very dark in tone, it sparkles with quirkily beautiful imagery and dry wit. Garnier’s work has been likened to the great thriller writer, Georges Simenon.
In an article for his French publisher, Zulma, Garnier described what led him to become a writer:
According to my birth certificate, I was born on 4th July 1949 in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. I can’t say I remember the event, but let’s assume that’s how it happened. Afterwards came a normal childhood in what you’d call the average French family – which felt more and more average the more it dawned on me that I’d been sold a world with no user’s manual, lured in by false advertising. When I was about fifteen, the state education system and I agreed to go our separate ways. I’d had enough, I was suffocating, convinced that real life was going on somewhere else. So off I went in search of it. In those days you could still travel freely through North Africa, the Middle and Far East. With my head in the clouds, I roamed about for a decade or so until I came to see that it really is a very small world and, being round, you always end up back where you started.
Deep down, I harboured a wild dream of writing something longer, something like a book.
That’s when the wife and baby came along. All around me, the faithful companions I’d met along the way were nestling back into their kennels, burying their dreams and delusions like bones to gnaw at in years to come when they were old and toothless. Rebelling against such mass surrender, I threw myself into rock and roll – and landed with a resounding thud. I was no better at being a pop star than I was at being a dad. Still, it was writing my pitiful ditties that gave me a taste for words. Deep down, I harboured a wild dream of writing something longer, something like a book. But my limited vocabulary, terrible spelling and hopeless grammar seemed like insurmountable obstacles. So I got divorced, remarried, dabbled in design for women’s magazines, took on odd jobs, got up to the occasional bit of mischief. In short, I was killing time, frittering my life away. The boredom of my childhood numbed me once again with the sweetness of a drug. I was thirty-five.
You can only escape if you’re imprisoned, which to some extent I was. I had no choice: my only way out was through a blank page. Slowly scraping along, I dug myself out through a corner of the kitchen table, and as I tunnelled my way up to the surface, I filled the hole within myself. One short story, then two, then three… And then one day I had a publisher on the phone, and not just any publisher, but POL. A collection of twelve short stories was published under the title ‘L’année sabbatique’, ‘A year’s sabbatical’. After that, another sixty-odd books were brought out by several other publishers: books for children, books for adults, books labelled as noir or white, whatever – I’ve never been interested in that particular apartheid. So there it is, a bit muddled I’ll admit. I write because, as Pessoa said: ‘Literature is proof that life is not enough’.
Pascal Garnier was a talented novelist, short story writer, children's author and painter. From his home in the mountains of the Ardèche, he wrote fiction in a noir palette with a cast of characters drawn from ordinary provincial life.
Though his writing is often very dark in tone, it sparkles with quirkily beautiful imagery and dry wit. Garnier's work has been likened to the great thriller writer, Georges Simenon. His noirs are published in English by Gallic Books.
Praise for Pascal Garnier:
'A brilliant exercise in grim and gripping irony, it makes you grin as well as wince.' The Sunday Telegraph
'Often bleak, often funny and never predictable.' The Observer
'Garnier's take on the frailty of life has a bracing originality.' The Sunday Times
'For those with a taste for Georges Simenon or Patricia Highsmith, Garnier's recently translated oeuvre will strike a chord.' The Independent
'This is tough, bloody stuff, but put together with a cunning intelligence.' The Sunday Times
Why The F*ck Aren’t You Reading Pascal Garnier?
Column by Keith Rawson July 28, 2015
In:
Noir Pascal Garnier WHY THE F*CK AREN'T YOU READING?
Why The F*ck Aren't You Reading? is a feature where the columnist spotlights a writer who has a dedicated following and is well known within the writing community, but hasn't achieved the elephant-in-the-room style success of a Stephen King or Gillian Flynn—But they deserve to, dammit! Hopefully the column will help gain the author featured a few more well deserved readers.
The French know noir.
Well, at least I think they do. I know a bunch of my writing buddies have great French publishers who fly them to France to participate in huge crime fiction festivals and signings at various bookstores around Paris. But for the most part, the only French noirists I’ve ever read are Georges Simenon (who was Belgian, but became well known during his time in France), Patricia Highsmith (yeah, I know, she was American. But let’s face it, people, once she left, she was all the way gone), and Jean-Patrick Manchette (if you haven’t already, get your hands on The Prone Gunman. But, to be honest with you, Manchette’s really more hardboiled than noir), but other than those three, the only French writers I’ve read are existentialists such as Camus and Sarte. I know, I’m incredibly lacking in my international fiction education, but what can you do? There’s only so much time in the day, and I’m usually at least a day behind on most of my writing and reading assignments, so sometimes it’s pretty hard for me to search out new American authors let alone new international ones.
Imagine if Salvator Dali got really depressed and decided to start writing crime fiction.
But sometimes, you get lucky and an excellent author just gets dropped in your lap.
As I’ve mentioned on more than a few occasions, I’m sent loads of unsolicited novels. And as I’ve mentioned before, I wouldn’t read 99% of them even if I had the time and energy for it. But occasionally, you get your hands on a diamond in the rough. You get your hands on dirty little books about middle aged people from provincial France doing absolutely horrible, albeit hilarious, surreal shit to one another, like a man tracking down the widow of his wife’s dead lover so he can possibly murder her for being an inadequate wife. Or a quaint village deciding to go all Road Warrior on some gypsies who’re camping out down the road and despoiling the village. These diamonds in the rough which seemingly dropped into my lap were the novels of the late, great French noirists, Pascal Garnier, and they are brilliant.
The Skinny aka Just The Facts and Nothing But The Facts
Pascal Garnier was born on July 4, 1949 in Paris, France. He’s the author of 60 books for both children and adults. Along with being a prolific author, he was also a painter of some renown and also illustrated most of his children’s books. Garnier passed away on March 5, 2010 at his home in Cornas, France.
The Work aka Why You Should Be Reading This Guy
Well, as I mentioned before, Garnier is about as noir as they come. So if you’re a fan writers such James M. Cain, David Goodis, George V. Higgins, Megan Abbott, or Jake Hinkson, this guy is going to be right up your alley. Like most noirists, his characters tend to be very detached from much of humanity, and have little to no understanding of why most people can lead such dull and utterly pointless lives. Of course, most of Garnier’s characters are just as mind numbingly boring as the individuals they despise. But that’s just how most noir protagonists are—disgusted by the world at large, but just as guilty of the world's sins.
Probably the writer I can most easily compare Garnier to is Georges Simenon. Although I will say that most of Simenon’s characters are far more urbane than Garnier’s. Garnier is more preoccupied with characters in rural or suburban settings. Most of them lead very ordinary lives. They are exterminators and retirees. They’re shut-ins and students at the beginnings of their lives. They are coarse, unintelligent, and single minded in their focus.
And because of this single mindedness, it leads to some fairly whacky twists and turns in the storylines. Garnier seems to be very much a student of surrealism and slapstick comedy. Certain passages in several of Garnier’s books reminded me of the darker works of Haruki Murakami—albeit Garnier was publishing long before Murakami ever put pen to paper—and seem nightmare-like in their imagery and intensity. But at their most intense and fiendish, Garnier is able to interject a prattfall or offhanded line which suddenly lightens the overall mood before plunging it back into darkness again. Honestly, the best analogy I can come up with is this: Imagine if Salvator Dali got really depressed and decided to start writing crime fiction. Chances are what he wrote would very much resemble the novels of Pascal Garnier.
Where To Start aka What Book Should I Read First, Smart Guy?
Let me start by saying that all of Garnier’s novels are extremely short. I’ve read 6 of the 7 that are currently available in translation and the longest, The Panda Theory, is only 160 pages long. So obviously all of them are incredibly fast reads. Now with that being said, I would advise you start off with the first Garnier novel I read, The Front Passenger Seat.
The Front Passenger Seat is the story of Fabien and Sylvie, a longtime married couple whose marriage is a little on the shaky side. Okay, shaky side is an understatement, they pretty much can’t stand one another. Anyway, Sylvie dies in a car accident along with a man who was riding with her in the front passenger seat, and we discover that the man was Sylvie’s lover. Fabian becomes obsessed with the man, and tracks down the man’s wife to punish her for being such an inadequate wife. The whole problem is the widow, Martine, has become roommates with her longtime friend Madeline, and Madeline is a bulldog of a woman. Obviously, hilarity and bloodshed ensues, and everyone gets exactly what they deserve.
But like every author I’ve featured in Why The F*ck Aren’t You Reading, no matter where you start with Garnier, you’re sure to find a title you’ll love.
LC control no.: n 00028267
LC classification: PQ2667.A76395
Personal name heading:
Garnier, Pascal
Found in: Garnier, Pascal. Chambre 12, c2000: t.p. (Pascal Garnier)
p. 5 of cover (b. 1949; lives in Lyon; writes fiction)
LC data base, 11-07-00 (hdg.: Garnier, Pascal)
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QUOTED: "This is a short, sharp shocker, laced with keen philosophical insight amid the blood and guts"
A choice of crime novels
Jeff Noon
Spectator. 331.9801 (July 2, 2016): p47.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
http://www.spectator.co.uk
Full Text:
Pascal Garnier's novella Too Close to the Edge (Gallic, 7.99 [pounds sterling], translated by Emily Boyce) deals with the boredom of middle age and how passion and violence can take on the guise of salvation. Éliette has moved to the French countryside following her husband's death. She seeks an 'atom of madness to stop herself sliding into reason', and finds it in the form of Étienne, a man who helps her when her car breaks down. She invites him into her lonely home, and her life. When her neighbour's son is killed in a road accident, it becomes obvious that her new lover is linked to this tragedy in some way, and yet Éliette reacts strangely: she welcomes the criminal behaviour, and in fact becomes criminalised herself.
Éliette isn't exactly a likeable protagonist, yet it's easy to be fascinated by her. She will do anything to preserve her newfound amour, even turn a blind eye to incest, and to murder. As the consequences of her actions spin out of control and the bodies pile up, the book loses its earlier power. It becomes almost comic in a grand guignol manner. Still, this is a short, sharp shocker, laced with keen philosophical insight amid the blood and guts.
Seicho Matsumoto's A Quiet Place (Bitter Lemon, 8.99 [pounds sterling], translated by Louise Heal Kawai) also gives us an ordinary person who turns nasty. Tsuneo Asai is a government official who hides a fierce ambition behind his bowing and scraping. When his wife dies of a heart attack in one of the 'Love Hotel' districts of Tokyo, he becomes obsessed first of all with discovering the reasons for her being there, and later on with uncovering the actual events surrounding her death. He fixates on one particular man as her supposed lover, and pursues him, and kills him in a fit of passion. It's probably the most passionate moment of his life.
In her final years, Tsuneo's wife became an accomplished writer of haikus, and there's an element of that exquisite poetic form in the book, in the details that turn the story in new directions, and the tiniest mistakes that lead to tragic and unforeseen outcomes. It's an enjoyable read until the final pages, which fizzle out somewhat. If only we could have followed our anti-hero a little further, into his final struggles. It's easy to imagine the madness that would be revealed as his carefully constructed world caves in completely. The missing final line of the haiku tantalises.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
It was a delight to read the first sentence of James Sallis's Willnot (No Exit, 7.99 [pounds sterling]): 'We found the bodies two miles outside town, near the old gravel pit.' At last, a traditional murder mystery! Sadly, it was not to be. Sallis is a proven master of noir, but Willnot is a frustrating novel. Our narrator is Lamar Hale, the town's doctor, and his various medical cases take up most of our reading time. Meagre suspense is provided by the arrival of Bobby Lowndes, a soldier on the run, and the mysterious presence trying to kill him. But as the plot wanders about, so does the mind. Unforgivably, the cover blurb reveals the story's one major incident, which actually takes place a few pages from the book's end. I believe the publisher is trying to persuade us this is a crime novel. It isn't. It's a piece of fair to middling Americana.
The most intriguing character is Lamar's late father, a writer of science fiction novels. For a moment I really thought the bodies in the pit would turn out to be part of one of these fantastical tales. Wishful thinking. In this town, such flights of fancy hardly ever leave the launch pad.
Rising from the neo-noir underground, we have Yuri Herrera with his new book The Transmigration of Bodies (& Other Stories, 8.99 [pounds sterling], tranlated by Lisa Dillman). An unnamed Mexican city is depicted as a dark, menacing plague zone, and the story's protagonist--known only as the Redeemer --is one of the few people capable of negotiating between the various factions that rule the mosquito-clouded streets. Many citizens hide behind surgical masks, and aliases: Three Times Blonde, The Unruly, Dolphin, and so on. These are larger-than-life characters inhabiting a plot that involves two dead bodies and two rival criminal gangs. The Redeemer's job is to deliver the two corpses back to their rightful families, a task fraught with danger ('grimreapery') for all concerned.
Barely 100 pages long, the book is more concerned with atmosphere than plot, with language as its true star. Herrera's brilliantly surreal turns of phrase mirror the strangeness of the world: he knows that brutal everyday truths are best revealed through dreams. Towards the end, the Redeemer imagines himself to be 'nothing but someone's scar, nameless, no epitaph, just a line on the skin'. And yet this is one scar that tells a good story: blood-soaked, driven deep and expertly written.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Noon, Jeff. "A choice of crime novels." Spectator, 2 July 2016, p. 47. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA456674406&it=r&asid=9c1a77875dfd52bba1728cef474c154d. Accessed 25 Jan. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A456674406
The Panda Theory
Thomas Gaughan
Booklist. 110.9-10 (Jan. 1, 2014): p52.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
The Panda Theory. By Pascal Garnier. Tr. by Gallic Books. Feb. 2014. 128p. Gallic, paper, $12.95 (9781906040420).
A man named Gabriel arrives in a small, nondescript town in Brittany. We know nothing about him, except that he knows no one in the town. Looking for a late dinner, he enters a bistro. Jose, the owner, tells Gabriel that he is not cooking that night; his wife has been hospitalized. The next day Gabriel takes groceries to Jose's bistro and cooks for him. He does a similar thing for Madeleine, who works at his hotel. Taken with Gabriel, Madeleine offers herself to him, but he politely declines. Garnier presents Gabriel as a human anodyne, a Samaritan as gentle as the titular stuffed panda he buys for Jose's children, and he bears his ennui by cooking for his new friends. But we also learn that something in his past haunts him, and it generates a denouement that Albert Camus would have understood. The Panda Theory is Gallic to its core. Some American readers may dismiss it, but Francophiles will embrace it.--Thomas Gaughan
Gaughan, Thomas
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Gaughan, Thomas. "The Panda Theory." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2014, p. 52. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA357147560&it=r&asid=956e188ffcc8446f39ba40849894b76e. Accessed 25 Jan. 2017.
QUOTED: "this novel is dark enough to sink the hook deep into fans of noir."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A357147560
The Panda Theory
Publishers Weekly. 260.49 (Dec. 2, 2013): p65.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Panda Theory Pascal Gamier, trans, from the French by Gallic Books. Gallic (www.gallicbooks.com), $12.95 trade paper (176p) ISBN 978-1906040-42-0
In this taut, low-key thriller, French author Garnier's first crime novel to be translated into English, a man calling himself Gabriel wanders into a small Breton village, his urge to kill--for the moment--held in check. Who can say what will ignite the impulse? Winning a stuffed panda with a show of skill at the shooting gallery at the carnival? Or nothing at all? The people he meets at his residence hotel and in cafes don't have a glimmer of the nightmarish images that haunt his thoughts; instead, they believe they have found a new friend. Although Gamier (1949-2010) once stated in an article for his French publisher that he didn't pay attention to categories ("Books labeled as noir or white, whatever--I've never been interested in that particular apartheid"), this novel is dark enough to sink the hook deep into fans of noir. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Panda Theory." Publishers Weekly, 2 Dec. 2013, p. 65. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA353692300&it=r&asid=06fc8f86f28704e01bbba75884b91518. Accessed 25 Jan. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A353692300
Pascal Garnier: The A26
World Literature Today. 89.5 (September-October 2015): p63.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 University of Oklahoma
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com
Full Text:
Pascal Garnier
The A26
Melanie Florence, tr.
Gallic Books
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Pascal Garnier's dark novel depicts human trauma with a fearless clarity. Following a traumatized woman's descent into madness as she loses her brother--who Is experiencing his own troubles in difficult circumstances-Garnier's signature spare prose is both stark and haunting. A touch of mystery serves to sharpen the book's depiction of people and the choices they make when troubles come.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Pascal Garnier: The A26." World Literature Today, vol. 89, no. 5, 2015, p. 63. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA426980474&it=r&asid=eea22ffc8c03cb312669062e49ac78a1. Accessed 25 Jan. 2017.
QUOTED: "This was a strange book, in a good way."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A426980474
Moon in a Dead Eye
Gloria Feit
Reviewer's Bookwatch. (Mar. 2015):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Moon in a Dead Eye
Pascal Garnier
Translated from the French by Emily Boyce
Gallic Books
59 Ebury St., London SW1W 0NZ
Meryl Zegarek Public Relations
9781908313492, $12.95, 128 pp, www.amazon.com
This was a strange book, in a good way, I hasten to add! Very unlike most others I've read, either recently or not so recently. It begins in a most charming manner, introducing the reader to Martial and Odette Sudre, retired professionals married over 40 years and now entering a new phase of their lives, leaving Suresnes, "the Parisian suburb they had called home for more than twenty years" to move to Les Conviviales. a retirement village in the Midi, boasting "an active life in the sunshine [where] you're protected and secure, with a dedicated caretaker-manager on site 365 days of the year." Initially they find Les Conviviales a bit disconcerting: "There was something a bit strange about all these houses that looked the same, though; it felt like ringing their own doorbell."
The first and only residents of the complex for the first month, the Sudres are soon joined by Maxime and Marlene Node, a couple of similar background who had lived in the residential neighborhood of Orleans, and then by Lea, a single woman who the others speculate may be a widow. Monsieur Gerard Flesh, the aforementioned caretaker, and ultimately Nadine, the 45-yeyar-old woman hired to organize the activities and run the clubhouse and who finds a bit of cannabis soothing, round out the residents. "It made Martial smile. For the time being, there were still just the five of them, with no new arrivals on the cards. They weren't exactly fighting for space in the pool. In fact, it was starting to feel a bit weird, all the empty houses." But they all have their little quirks. Maxime, for example, feels comforted with his gun behind the cushions of his wheelchair. The atmosphere changes soon, however, with the appearance just beyond the gates of caravans of gypsies, apparently an annual event, and a sense of unease sets in, the residents' sense of isolation suddenly seeming threatening.
Pascal Garnier, prize-winning author of over 60 books [of which this was the third published in the US], was born in Paris in 1949 and passed away in 2010. Next up for this reviewer is his The Front Seat Passenger, which was published by Gallic Books in the US in September of 2014, to which I am greatly looking forward. Recommended.
Gloria Feit
Reviewer
Feit, Gloria
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Feit, Gloria. "Moon in a Dead Eye." Reviewer's Bookwatch, Mar. 2015. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA405678650&it=r&asid=52f50d4180a0d0c37b97442d2cda34e6. Accessed 25 Jan. 2017.
QUOTED: "This book ... is a riveting glimpse into another odd world from this author, and is recommended."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A405678650
The Front Seat Passenger
Gloria Feit
Reviewer's Bookwatch. (Mar. 2015):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
The Front Seat Passenger
Pascal Garnier
Translated from the French by Jane Aitken
Gallic Books
59 Ebury St., London SW1W 0NZ
Meryl Zegarek Public Relations
9781908313638, $13.95, 139 pp, www.amazon.com
Pascal Garnier, prize-winning author of over 60 books [of which this was the fourth and last published in the US], was born in Paris in 1949 and passed away in 2010. Having just recently read "Moon in a Dead Eye," the penultimate book by Pascal Garnier, I should have been prepared for this one, but must admit I was not. I described that book as "strange," albeit in a good way; as to this one, if I had to use one word, it would be "weird." But in a good way as well (I think).
One gets some inkling of what is in store on the very first page of the book, when the driver of a car, not identified until near the end of this short tale, is described thusly: "The right hand moved from the steering wheel, caressing the gear lever, as one might the head of a cat, or the handle of a gun."
It is not a spoiler, as the back page of the book shares this information, to say that Fabien and Sylvie Delorme have a marriage that is no longer the vibrant, loving one it once was, and in the early pages of the book Sylvie dies in a fatal car crash; her "front seat passenger" was her lover, also killed in the crash. Fabien is moved to track down the lover's widow, Martine, and begins stalking her. What follows ares examples of dysfunctional relationships of every description marital, parental, etc.
To give just one example of the writing, this is the description of Martine, nearing her 32nd birthday: "She looked like an over-exposed photo, with so little presence that one wondered if she was capable of casting a shadow." This book, as its predecessor, is a riveting glimpse into another odd world from this author, and is recommended.
Gloria Feit
Reviewer
Feit, Gloria
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Feit, Gloria. "The Front Seat Passenger." Reviewer's Bookwatch, Mar. 2015. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA405678651&it=r&asid=5ea151b73939848cc7c6bea798eb1459. Accessed 25 Jan. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A405678651
QUOTED: "This isn't an abject failure – it bounds with ideas and blackness and Louis's nonchalance is always pleasant, but against the rest of M. Garnier's oeuvre, it does stand as a widely missed opportunity."
The Eskimo Solution by Pascal Garnier, Emily Boyce and Jane Aitken (translators)
The Eskimo Solution by Pascal Garnier, Emily Boyce and Jane Aitken (translators)
Category: Thrillers
Rating: 3/5
Reviewer: John Lloyd
Reviewed by John Lloyd
Summary: The latest piece from the consummate oeuvre that is the laboratoire Garnier mixes two distinct narratives, but to what end?
Buy? Maybe Borrow? Maybe
Pages: 144 Date: September 2016
Publisher: Gallic Books
ISBN: 9781910477229
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Meet Louis. He's a middle-aged chap, who is going nowhere, until he decides to stifle the life out of his mother. Well, she's not going anywhere either, and it only hastens her demise and boosts his inheritance when he needs to pay back a large debt. And Louis can only see it as a good thing that he is now offing elderly people to boost the monetary standing of his friends, as an unannounced service. Now meet out narrator, a thriller writer, who's inventing Louis, struggling with poorly-working typewriters in a rental cottage, and having what counts as quite the most inappropriate relationship… You'll jump from one narrative to the other in these pages, but be gripping on to everything to find the reason behind the connection.
Or at least that is the intent. For me, I found it a little bit revelatory, not about one of my favourite authors, but me, in that I wanted my cake and to eat it. I wanted the mystery of both strands – here a rampant serial killer with no qualms, a self-defined purpose and no problem with the authorities, there an innocent-seeming author, avoiding his partner's holiday plans, in fact avoiding conversation if he can, and the all-important connections between them. At the same time I both wanted them to be fully developed individual stories, and I wanted the link to be the thrust of the book.
And that link, therefore that thrust, took some time coming. The problems can be evident – namely, that however hard Garnier tries to break the form of the thriller by having a novel within a novel, both halves dripping in both blood and innocence, one half is definitely more disposable. Louis, while in a Garnier book, is created by a writer within a Garnier book, and that can only mean he's a little harder to care for, even if it's a fun Highsmith/Chabrol-styled thing to have a routine bloke going round killing the parents of his peers because the parents have stopped being valid and those peers deserve more than they have. You alternate between the two stories – Louis and his creator divide into separate chapters after a couple of scene-setters – and while I guess our two translators took care to stick to one half of the book each, the sections are too similar with too similar a style, and with equally unattributed dialogue et al failing to mark them out; even if Louis is past tense third person and the author present tense first person it can still be the font change that distinguishes the two pieces.
What's more, for being daring inasmuch as it leaves the Simenon template behind, this Garnier book suffers by, well, not reading as a Garnier book – and not quite as two Garnier short stories. While the typical French drinks are name-checked, the milieu he normally gives us is absent, and it is for his examinations of closed, ad hoc communities and what they say about the human lot that I turn to him. This, from a great thriller writer, to be featuring a thriller writer (and juvenilia writer, much as Garnier himself was) was just a little too precious. And for that connection between the halves? It smacked to me of a staple bang in the middle of a sheet of A4 – too small and insubstantial, hammering a connect between the two but leaving so much to just fly apart, when any other binding would have held the two together more firmly.
This isn't an abject failure – it bounds with ideas and blackness and Louis's nonchalance is always pleasant, but against the rest of M. Garnier's oeuvre, it does stand as a widely missed opportunity.
I must still thank the publishers for my review copy.
QUOTED: "For those with a taste for Georges Simenon or Patricia Highsmith, Garnier's recently translated oeuvre will strike a chord."
The A26, By Pascal Garnier
The murder highway that turns off into the French provinces
Emma Hagestadt
Friday 8 February 2013
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The French writer Pascal Garnier, who died in 2010, was known for his hypnotic, amoral novelettes drawn from the darker side of provincial life. For those with a taste for Georges Simenon or Patricia Highsmith, Garnier's recently translated oeuvre will strike a chord.
In The A26, The future is coming to Picardy in the form of a new auto-route. But close to the main construction site is a shuttered house where nothing has changed since 1945.
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In this home to Bernard and Yolande, it's hard to say which of the two siblings is the more dysfunctional. Yolande, traumatised by events that took place at the end of the war, hasn't left the house in decades, viewing the outside from a peephole she calls the "world's arsehole", while Bernard is now facing the endgame of a terminal illness.
In precise, limpid prose, Garnier builds up a creepily memorable portrait of life inside the house. Yolande spends her days snipping out pictures from magazines and boiling up bones for a pot-au-feu which smells disconcertingly of sweat.
Bernard returns every evening with the imprint of his SNCF cap still visible on his flattened hair. But then comes news of his diagnosis and his appearance at meal times becomes sporadic. With nothing left to lose, he starts to cruise the surrounding countryside and indulge his new found appetite for violence.
Like Highsmith's Tom Ripley, Bernard's attitude to murder is supremely relaxed. His first victim, Maryse, is a young redhead he spots thumbing a lift in the rain.
Maryse is followed by Irene, a plump older woman whose body also ends being abandoned by the fledging A26. More murders follow as we are inducted into the secrets of Bernard and Yolande's quasi-incestuous youth.
Garnier's novel has been described variously as a roman gris and a roman dur. While this is an undeniably steely work, his translator Melanie Florence does justice to the author's occasional outbreaks of dark humour that suddenly pierce though the clouds of encroaching existential gloom.
QUOTED: "It’s a quick read and full of action, much like a play. There are few actors and sets, but much to catch the eye."
The Islanders by Pascal Garnier, translated by Emily Boyce
by Sarah Hutchins on October 1, 2015
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Publisher: Gallic Books
Formats: Paperback, eBook, Kindle, Audible
Purchase: Powell’s | Amazon | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble | iBooks
Love, death, and the absurd: these make up the belle macabre of French art. The Islanders is a twisted, sadistic, funny, clever, gritty, booze-soaked noir novel from the dark imagination of Pascal Garnier, translated into English by Emily Boyce.
The Islanders begins much in the same way as Albert Camus’s The Stranger. Instead of Mersault traveling to dreaded Algeria to attend his mother’s funeral, it’s Olivier who is traveling to dreaded provincial Versailles to attend his mother’s funeral. There, he accidentally reunites with the only person he’s ever loved, his high school sweetheart, Jeanne. She lives with her loud, obese, blind brother, Rodolphe, who is not content to be the third wheel and has a few tricks up his sleeve.
I don’t give a fuck whether you killed the kid or not, whether the tramp was innocent or not, what sticks in my mind is “Jeanne and Olivier,” like “Romeo and Juliet” or “Héloïse and Abélard.”
It’s a quick read and full of action, much like a play. There are few actors and sets, but much to catch the eye. If not a play, this would make an excellent smoke-hazed movie.
French noir is not like American whodunits, which focus on the mystery and surprise at the end. Instead, it is a descent into darkness and madness. Allusions throughout the book, such as the predominantly referenced painting The Raft of the Medusa, make this novel a dark, rich dessert.
23May2016
Review of Too Close to the Edge by Pascal Garnier, Emily Boyce (Translation)
Posted in 2016, Fiction, May, Review by My Book Self
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About Too Close to the Edge
Recently widowed grandmother Éliette is returning to her house in the mountains when her car breaks down. A stranger offers help and Éliette gives him a lift, glad of the company and interruption to her routine.
A tale of retirement and calm domesticity, with a hint of menace about to explode.
My Review
With each turn of the page the story becomes darker and darker. Éliette certainly blossoms from mild mannered mature woman to a stealth bad girl before our very eyes. Her quiet, lonesome life dives headfirst into sheer mayhem. Lots of humor peppering the narrative with precision timing. Secondary characters along with subplots enhance the foreboding impending events. Another prize from Garnier. The ending was fantastic. Once again translation is excellent, kudos to Emily Boyce.
About Pascal Garnierimage
Pascal Garnier, who died in March 2010, was a talented novelist, short story writer, children’s author and painter. From his home in the mountains of the Ardèche, he wrote fiction in a noir palette with a cast of characters drawn from ordinary provincial life. Though his writing is often very dark in tone, it sparkles with quirkily beautiful imagery and dry wit. Garnier’s work has been likened to the great thriller writer, Georges Simenon. Read an article by Pascal Garnier, describing his path to becoming a writer.
Published April 1st 2016 by Gallic Books (first published June 7th 2010)
QUOTED: "the author’s skill of cramming such a vibrant, brilliantly layered world into such a short page span. The terrific one-liners bring clarity to life, death, and the assorted bits in-between."
6Jun2016
Book Review: The Front Seat Passenger, by Pascal Garnier
Posted in 2016, Reviews by Little Bookness Lane
Publisher: Gallic Books | Publication date: 10th March 2014
Front Seat Passenger Author Profile
Front Seat Passenger - 10.03.14After reading my first Pascal Garnier book last month, this book called to me from NetGalley to download it whilst I was supposed to be uploading a review for another book entirely!
I’m so glad I did, as The Front Seat Passenger is another winning combination of the wry observations of impossibly surreal grim situations and the absence of domestic harmony.
Monsieur Fabien Delorme has a caring, yet distant relationship with his father. Their emotions are fairly constipated, until alcohol is introduced to the conversation encouraging Fabien to spill his guts while his father maintains a bland composure. Bizarrely his deceased mother is referred to by her Christian name, and his father’s display of affection is sparse at best. It’s interesting being a fly on the wall watching them interact from their respective corners.
Following a visit to his father’s house to help him clear out his mother’s things, Fabien returns to an empty home. In the absence of his wife being there to greet him there are three answer phone messages. The first two are innocent enough. But the third is unsettling, as he hears a stranger’s voice telling him there has been an accident and urges him to contact the hospital.
It turns out that even though his beloved Sylvie has been killed in a car crash it’s his world that’s been turned upside down. They didn’t have children. They kept themselves to themselves. So now it was just him and the knowledge that his wife was not alone when she died. He should be able to take comfort in that, but it was such a cruel way to discover that she was having an affair.
To Fabien children were just receptacles that you constantly had to empty and fill. They clung to you for years, and as soon as they took themselves adults, they reproduced and ruined your holidays with their offspring.
Being left without a way to confront her, Fabien makes the unusual decision to focus on stalking the widow of his wife’s lover. He embarks on clandestine methods to get closer to Martine Arnoult, but first he has to get passed her battle-axe friend, Madeleine – a.k.a. the human shield.
Needless to say there’s some top class satirical moments and the spontaneous method of dispatching ‘problems’ as they occur, verging on the unhinged. Stephen King’s ‘Misery’ came to mind at one point, but not everything is as it appears! If one thing is clear it’s that Fabien ought to leave dangerous games to the more experienced players.
I’m wowed by the author’s skill of cramming such a vibrant, brilliantly layered world into such a short page span. The terrific one-liners bring clarity to life, death, and the assorted bits in-between. And I’ll hold my hand up. I wasn’t expecting any twist in the tale until one was delivered with precision timing. It’s sharp, and very, very clever.
QUOTED: "Garnier is able to assemble a story that is not going to leave the reader indifferent. With an unadorned but effective writing, Garnier creates a tense atmosphere that prevents us to abandon its reading. He introduces us into the darkest intricacies of the human soul."
Review: The Front Seat Passenger (1997) by Pascal Garnier (Trans: by Jane Aitken)
On 05/10/2016 By Jose IgnacioIn Pascal Garnier
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Esta entrada es bilingüe, para ver la versión en castellano desplazarse hacia abajo
Gallic Books, 2014. Format: Paperback. Original published in French as La Place du mort, Fleuve Noir, 1997 and re-edited by Zulma, 2010. Translated by Jane Aitken, 2014. ISBN-13: 978-1908313638. 142 pages.
9781908313638-235x361Synopsis: Fabien and Sylvie had both known their marriage was no longer working. And yet when Sylvie is involved in a fatal car accident, her husband is stunned to discover that she had a lover who died alongside her. With thoughts of revenge on his mind, Fabien decides to find out about the lover’s widow, Martine, first by stalking her, then by breaking into her home. He really needs to get Martine on her own. But she never goes anywhere without her formidable best friend, Madeleine…
My take:
His first reaction was to light a cigarette and go and smoke it naked by the open window. He had no idea what on earth she could have been doing in a car in Dijon, but he was certain of one thing, Sylvie was dead – it was as certain as the wind now ruffling the hair of his balls. He flicked his cigarette butt down five floors onto the roof of a black Twingo.
‘Shit …I’m a widower now, a different person. What should I wear?’
Thus, Fabien Delorme becomes aware that his wife has died in a car accident shortly after returning back home to Paris. He had been visiting his father in Normandy, to help him to clear out the attic. Once in Dijon he finds out his wife was with another man in the car, a circumstance totally unknown to him. Her lover had also died in the accident. As from that moment, he begins to design a plan to get to meet the spouse of her wife’s lover
In slightly over 100 pages, Garnier is able to assemble a story that is not going to leave the reader indifferent. With an unadorned but effective writing, Garnier creates a tense atmosphere that prevents us to abandon its reading. He introduces us into the darkest intricacies of the human soul. For the sake of brevity, The Front Seat Passenger is a very powerful novel, in the purest ‘noir’ style with some shades of humour, that will delight all fans of Georges Simenon, Boileau-Narcejac, Patricia Highsmith, Frédéric Dard and the like. All in all a disturbing but very effective novel that is well worth reading.
My rating: A ( I loved it)
About the author: Pascal Garnier, who died in March 2010, was a talented novelist, short story writer, children’s author and painter. From his home in the mountains of the Ardèche, he wrote fiction in a noir palette with a cast of characters drawn from ordinary provincial life. Though his writing is often very dark in tone, it sparkles with quirkily beautiful imagery and dry wit. Garnier’s work has been likened to the great thriller writer, Georges Simenon. Read an article by Pascal Garnier, describing his path to becoming a writer.
To the best of my knowledge his complete bibliography comprise the following titles: La Solution esquimau, 1996 [The Eskimo Solution, Gallic Books, 2016]; La Place du mort, 1997 [The Front Seat Passenger, Gallic Books 2014]; Les Insulaires, 1998 [The Islanders, Gallic Books, 2014]; Trop près du bord, 1999 [Too Close to the Edge, Gallic Books, 2016]; L’A26, 1999 [The A26, Gallic Books, 2013]; Chambre 12, 2000; Nul n’est à l’abri du succès, 2001 (Prix du festival “Polar dans la ville” 2001); Les Nuisibles, 2002; Les Hauts du Bas, 2003 [Low Heights, Gallic Books, 2017]; Parenthèse, 2004; Flux, 2005 (Grand Prix de l’humour noir 2006); Comment va la douleur ?, 2006 [How’s the Pain?, Gallic Books, 2012]; La Théorie du panda, 2008 [The Panda Theory, Gallic Books, 2012]; Le Grand Loin, 2009; Lune captive dans un œil mort, 2009 [Moon in a Dead Eye, Gallic Books, 2013]; Le Grand Loin, 2010; Cartons, 2012 [Boxes, Gallic Books, 2015].
And the translator: Jane Aitken studied history at St Anne’s College, Oxford. She is a publisher and translator from the French.
QUOTED: "It was full of existentialism and illusions of the mind and self-awareness, all contradicting themselves but in the sweetest way possible."
Monday, 2 February 2015
Review: The Panda Theory by Pascal Garnier
Title: The Panda Theory
Author: Pascal Garnier
Cover Artist: Gallic Books
Publisher: Gallic Books
Release Date: March 26th 2012 (first published February 4th 2008)
Genre: Noir
Page Count: 171
Original Language: French
Format Read: Paperback
Other books in series: N/A
Movie Adaptation: N/A
Where you can buy it: Amazon, Waterstones, The Book Depository, Ebay, Barnes and Noble
Add to Goodreads
I bought this book because I'm doing a school project as part of my A-Levels, and I needed a few books that would have both literary and philosophical worth. This had a good description and positive reviews on Goodreads so I decided that this might be a good book to choose.
And oh boy did I love it. It is worth a lot more to me than of purely literal and philosophical means. Beware for a seriously positive review (it reads very slushy because I have a big book crush on this book).
Blurb:
Gabriel is a stranger in a small Breton town. Nobody knows where he came from or why he's here. Yet his small acts of kindness, and exceptional cooking, quickly earn him acceptance from the locals.
His new friends grow fond of Gabriel, who seems as reserved and benign as the toy panda he wins at the funfair.
But unlike Gabriel, the fluffy toy is not haunted by his past . . .
The first page:
*Spoiler Alert - this review does not assume you are familiar with the story's ending*
I had never heard of this book until I had searched the net for hours, trying to find the perfect books for my EPQ, and came across it. Indeed the title caught my eye, and the fact that it was clearly a French author who had written it made me want to read the English translation even more.
I’ve never read a noir before. It has been such a long time since I’ve even heard the genre mentioned that I forgot it was a valid genre altogether. So this alone would have drawn me towards it, because for me, the darker the novel… the better.
The Panda Theory is about a man called Gabriel who is temporarily in a Breton town, and he’s extremely kind and can cook very well. That’s all we know about him and all we ever find out about him, but the book subtly reveals parts of his past that could suggest him to be our noir villain. He wins a toy panda at a fair and gives it to one of his new friends whose wife is currently in a coma and in hospital.
Though the panda doesn’t seem to play a big part in the telling of the story, it helps add dimension to Gabriel, and we find out more about him through the comparison to the panda. His friends love him and he has a love interest too, so where does it start to become grim? You definitely have to read carefully to spot all of the clues.
To say it would be a dream of mine to write a novel as successfully as this noir was would be quite the understatement. I just never knew what I was in store for when reading this book. It begins as innocently as the sunrise, drawing you in with its bright and breezy feel. Then, Gabriel starts having these flashbacks, the feel to the reader is akin to the first day of school… a little unnerving, but otherwise fine.
The rest of the book passes like this, its humorous tone keeping you afloat, but you can tell the sun is starting to set. Now the book feels heavier somehow, like you’re stuck in a lift with a suspicious smell, and you’re hoping you’ll get out in the next moment with full use of your senses remaining.
And then the last few pages feel like your best friend is stabbing you in the chest with a blunt knife. You hope its over, but the pain is only prolonged through a sudden turn of events.
There is no less creative way of describing this book without spoiling it, and to do so would do it no justice. It was full of existentialism and illusions of the mind and self-awareness, all contradicting themselves but in the sweetest way possible. I would consider it an easy-read, but this makes it all the less predictable. And I loved that element of it.
I think I might have given this book four stars on Goodreads, but I read it like it was a five and reviewed it like it was a five. The Panda Theory is a gloriously dark treasure of a book that makes you and breaks you, and the translator did a great job. Five cups of tea from me!
Note: This review is also on my tumblr blog for my school project, so I have not stolen this review from anyone! I wrote it, and the two times it is on the internet was posted by me.
QUOTED: "At times Garnier can go overboard with seeing the world through dystopia-tinted glasses, almost to the point of parody, but his misanthropy is always delivered with a poetic zeal that keeps his novels palatable and energetic rather than dreary and pretentious."
Monday, December 21, 2015
Book Review: The Islanders (1998) by Pascal Garnier
This is the fourth Garnier novel for me, and I've come to the conclusion that he's the poltergeist of French literature. Garnier's novels are studies of individuals whose inner demons are kept in check (barely) by the routines, beliefs and ceremonies of middle-class life. Garnier, in his role as a poltergeist, tears apart the delicate web of social respectability and responsibility that keeps his characters on the straight and narrow, and then records what happens to these people when they get off the leash and start barking and biting and killing.
In this novel we have Olivier, a recovering alcoholic, Rodolphe, the world's nastiest blind man, and Jeanne, Olivier's long-ago girlfriend, with whom he shares a murderous secret from their teenage years. Olivier returns to the Paris suburb of Versailles to make funeral arrangements for his deceased mother. Versailles is where he grew up, and it's a place he wholeheartedly detests. Olivier's shocked to find that Jeanne and her brother Rodolphe are living across the hall from his mother's apartment. Olivier and Jeanne haven't seen each other in twenty or so years, but they're almost instantly drawn back to each other. The folie a deux crime for which they were never caught as teenagers was the kidnap and murder of a two-year-old boy. Olivier decides to hit the bottle again, and the bodies start to pile up.
Garnier's plots are spare but smart; he gives his characters a bit of a push in one direction and then, in keeping with the poltergeist metaphor, commences to pinch them, throw things at them, occasionally push them down a long flight of stairs. and otherwise torment them until the worst and truest part of their character is fully revealed. And so it is here. Olivier goes off the wagon for one night and so begins a parade of murders and a trip into madness for the only two characters left standing at the end of the book.
Garnier's artistic inspiration would seem to come from Jean-Paul Sartre's observation in No Exit that "hell is other people." In this novel, as in others by Garnier that I've read, the characters find humanity to be a sorry spectacle, and an excruciating one when having deal one on one with people. A typical Garnier character looks around and describes what he sees and feels using a palette filled with venom-based paints. At times Garnier can go overboard with seeing the world through dystopia-tinted glasses, almost to the point of parody, but his misanthropy is always delivered with a poetic zeal that keeps his novels palatable and energetic rather than dreary and pretentious.
Posted by Cary Watson at 4:58 PM
Review: Pascal Garnier – The Front Seat Passenger
February 13, 2014 / Sarah
Gallic Books have been translating a series of novels by Pascal Garnier. These are slim books, reminiscent of the writings of 8a579eddb4bf8f649667fc1baf77e1dcPatricia Highsmith, which provide short but thought-provoking slices of French noir. The Front Seat Passenger is the latest in the series and chronicles the reaction of Fabian whose wife, Sylvie, is killed in a car accident with her lover. He attempts to ingratiate himself with the wife of the dead man, Martine, to exact revenge. But Martine has an over protective best friend who first needs to be removed from the scene.
The first part of the book is excellent as we enter the grieving world of Fabian who, although mourning his dead wife, feels curiously removed from his emotions. His dislocation is exacerbated by his discovery of Sylvie’s affair but in the midst of his shock he is composed enough to write down the address of the dead man’s wife. Before long, he is stalking her with the intention of starting a relationship. But Sylvie has a curious friendship with the first wife of her dead husband. And so we enter the claustrophobic world of an off-beat cast of characters that draw you into their small oeuvre.
The book works well when its leaves the reader unsettled as to how the narrative will unfold. When it’s clear that all bets are off and, in fact, anything could happen, then the narrative felt too loose for me. Which isn’t to say it isn’t an enjoyable read. I particularly liked the sparsity of the writing and the matter of fact tone. It was also a short read, only 139 pages. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy these little blasts of noir.
Thanks to Gallic Books for my review copy. The translation is by Jane Aitkin.
QUOTED: "Garnier weaves an intricate web of compelling storytelling that’ll have you hooked."
Book Reviews: The Islanders by Pascal Garnier
By France Today Editors -
March 20, 2016
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The Islanders by Pascal Garnier
The Islanders by Pascal Garnier
First published in its original French in 2010, the year of Garnier’s untimely death aged just 61, The Islanders was translated into English last year. Set around Christmas time, this novella is about as anti-festive as can be, its darkly comic atmosphere placing it firmly in the noir genre. All this might make it a perfect festive present for the bah-humbug Francophile in your life!
The narrative follows protagonist Olivier to Versailles, where he’s come to bury his estranged mother – though extreme weather conditions trap him there for a week when the proceedings are delayed. Olivier bumps into a woman from his past and the encounter reveals skeletons in the closet which sparks a series of dramatic revelations. Garnier weaves an intricate web of compelling storytelling that’ll have you hooked. Another great title from Gallic Books!
The Islanders by Pascal Garnier. List price: $12.50. Published by Gallic Books
From France Today magazine
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Review: How's the Pain? by Pascal Garnier
How's the Pain? by Pascal Garnier translated by Emily Boyce, June 2012, 163 pages, Gallic Books, ISBN: 190831303X
“On the dot of eight o'clock, the TV news signature tune spread like a powder trail down the row of caravans, the newsreader's chubby face replicated endlessly.”
Simon is about to retire from the extermination business and is on his way to his last job. When he is overcome with sickness enroute he decides to spend the night in the Spa town of Val les Bains. There he meets a young man, a very pragmatic soul, Bernard, who is looking after his mother whilst he recuperates from losing two fingers at work.
Simon is feeling unwell and hires Bernard to chauffeur him to the Mediterranean town of Cap d'Agde so he can fulfil his last commission.
How's the Pain? is a short and at times amusing novel about Simon and Bernard's adventure and how things don't go to plan; the people they meet on their journey; the people left behind in Val les Bains; Simon's long career and life in France today.
In the notes from translator Emily Boyce, she writes that ”some...label his [Pascal Garnier's] genre the roman gris, with touches of brightness lightening the grim outlook of noir”.
I enjoyed this book, as I have the two similarly brief novels by the slightly more noir Jean-Patrick Manchette: The Prone Gunman and Three to Kill.
QUOTED: "It’s both welcoming and disturbing—a story that is easy to get into and stay with, yet one that also messes with your head. It’s bleak in a knowing and darkly humorous way."
Wed
Sep 14 2016 12:00pm
Fresh Meat
Review: The Eskimo Solution by Pascal Garnier
Brian Greene
The Eskimo Solution by Pascal Garnier is a crime novel that finds reality and fiction overlapping for an author's stay in Normandy.
Pascal Garnier (1949-2010) has become one of my favorite writers—not just of noir fiction, but among all scribes whose work I’ve read, regardless of genre or style. A few years back, a friend with similar reading tastes to mine alerted me to Gallic Books’ run of new translations of the Frenchman’s edgy crime stories. I’ve been hopelessly hooked since. When Gallic releases a new English version of one of the books, I devour it like it’s a favorite food item that I’ve managed to get my hands and mouth on after being starved for a stretch of time. As was the case with Gallic’s latest translation of Garnier’s noir work, The Eskimo Solution.
I have written about Garnier for this site more than once already, so there is no need for me to go into a lengthy overview of who he was as a person or writer in this post. If you care to, you can read my overview of him and/or my reviews of a few of the other individual novels. In short, Garnier was a guy who started writing (crime novels, children's books, and short stories) relatively late in his too-brief life and whom myself and others have compared to Georges Simenon.
Read Brian Greene's review of Boxes & Too Close to the Edge!
There are things about The Eskimo Solution (which was published in its original French in 2006) that make it similar to the eight other Garnier works Gallic has brought out in English so far. It’s brief and could easily be read in one sitting, if a person had the inclination and a few hours’ time. It’s both welcoming and disturbing—a story that is easy to get into and stay with, yet one that also messes with your head. It’s bleak in a knowing and darkly humorous way. It’s about seemingly “normal” people who go off the rails. It’s filled with unexpected, brain-twisting sentences and passages that will make you want to read them a few times over, maybe set the book down and reflect on them for a bit before reading on. Strokes like these:
She lives off her own death, self-sufficient.
Louis had ordered the same food as Richard. To eat like him was to start eating him.
I enjoy the moment all the more for knowing I’ll regret it bitterly tomorrow morning.
There is, however, one major facet of The Eskimo Solution that sets it apart from the other Garnier novels I’ve read: it’s done in dual perspectives. There’s a story, and then a story that has the writer of the first story telling you about that story and himself. Did you get all that? So you’re reading a fictional tale, and there are times when the fictional writer of that tale steps in and talks about the writing of it and about his life in general. And then the book goes back to the first story.
If you’re feeling at all confused, I can tell you that sometimes when I was reading the book, I momentarily forgot, or lost track of, whether I was reading the novel or the novel inside the novel. I didn’t particularly care, however, because both parts of the book are well written and compelling.
The story—the one the writer you get to know is working on—is about a 40-ish ne’er-do-well guy named Louis. At the onset of the tale, Louis is a man who isn’t exactly evil, but who isn’t much good, to himself or anyone else. He hasn’t got much money and he owes several people, and (at an age where this shouldn’t be happening anymore) he is still hitting his parents up for dough all the time. His love life is going nowhere; he’s a father who’s never had any kind of connection to his child; he’s not much of a friend to his friends...You can’t wait to meet him, right?
But if all of that about his character isn’t bad enough, what if I tell you that he abruptly decides to kill his parents for the inheritance this will bring him? And that this act triggers a chain of extreme behaviors in the guy? I’ll let readers new to the book learn all about what Louis gets up to after offing his mama and papa.
Then, there’s the story inside the story—that of the author of the Louis yarn. He is a man who must have been, at least partly, an autobiographical creation of Garnier’s, as he is a writer of children’s books who has decided to try his hand at penning a crime novel. The author convinces his reluctant editor to float him advance for this new kind of literary effort, and he uses the money to go off to the Normandy coast with his typewriter to get it done.
The writer is a lazy kind of fella, one who could be content to do nothing except daydream on the beach, people-watch, and view his favorite detective show on TV. But he’s got this book he needs to write, the one about Louis. And he’s got other concerns forced on him, such as that of his girlfriend’s 16-year old daughter, who is hanging around him all the time while her mother is occupied elsewhere. The teenager appears to be on a mission to seduce the writer, who is old enough to be her father in addition to being her mother’s beau. And then, there’s the matter of some of the elements of his Louis story starting to transfer into his actual life. Yow.
In terms of quality, I rate The Eskimo Solution as being middle-to-bottom among the Garnier novels I’ve read. But even if I don’t think it’s his very best work, I still rate it highly in general. If it was the first book I’d read by him, I’d be intrigued and would want to read more of his stuff. If you are new to his noir fiction, I suggest starting with The A26 or The Panda Theory. If you like those, take in the rest and don’t take a pass on The Eskimo Solution.
QUOTED: "His books are easily approachable yet ultimately disturbing. He makes you comfortable with blasé descriptions of his characters’ doings, then he makes the room in your brain go spinning when he describes abrupt, extreme actions these seemingly sleepwalking people take. He drops brain-bending, jarring lines and passages like they’re afterthoughts."
Wed
May 13 2015 1:00pm
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Fresh Meat
Fresh Meat: Boxes by Pascal Garnier
Brian Greene
Boxes by Pascal Garnier is a work of noir fiction about a French man who goes through with moving to the countryside despite his wife's sudden overseas disappearance (available May 18, 2015).
The house was sulking. Not one window would look him in the face.
Those dazzling lines from Pascal Garnier’s novel Boxes are enough to make me want to read more and more of his books. But those bits of dizzying surrealism are only part of what makes the late Frenchman’s novels such gems. Boxes, which was released in its original French in 2012, two years after Garnier’s death at age 60, is being brought out in a new English translation, courtesy of Melanie Florence. It’s the latest in Gallic Books’ series of English language versions of Garnier’s noir fiction works. And it’s superb.
Like much of Garnier’s body of noir, Boxes is set in a provincial area of France. Also in keeping with the author’s general approach, it studies a person who is living in such terrain and whose life – and mind, and spirit – is coming apart. Brice Casadamont is a middle-aged man who illustrates children’s books as his profession. (Garnier authored many kids’ books, in addition to his noir novels.) Brice and his wife Emma, an oft-traveling journalist some 20 years his junior, make the decision to vacate their apartment in the city of Lyon and relocate to the countryside. But sometime before moving day, Emma goes missing. She was in Egypt on assignment when she disappeared. Brice goes ahead with the move, anyway, and starts to make a life for himself in the village as he awaits word on Emma.
From the start, Brice’s life in the underpopulated area goes into an off-kilter mode. An introverted misanthrope (he illustrates kids’ books yet he hates kids), he makes the garage his bedroom and fails at what DIY home improvement projects he undertakes. He tells his boss off while abruptly leaving his present employment, and he dismisses Emma’s parents’ offers to come help him get the house set up. He also waves off his parents-in-law’s suggestion that he start seeing a counselor who might help him with the grief he must be feeling at Emma’s seemingly permanent disappearance. Instead, he (initially) mostly keeps to himself in the country home, and he begins slipping into a personal netherworld.
Here are some telling observations of Brice’s character, by way of Garnier’s omniscient narrator. This is shortly after Brice injures himself while wandering around the village:
Never could Brice have imagined that the walking stick he had borrowed from the pharmacist would afford him so many pleasures . . . It protected him from being too close to other people. He felt important. With a simple twirl of his stick he consigned this cruel, pathetic world to its humble fate, a billiard ball ricocheting around at the mercy of the void. Even as a child he had been fascinated by prosthetics. He would have liked to wear glasses or false teeth but unfortunately neither his eyes nor his gums had need of them. To make up for such tragic good health he had improvised glassless frames and stuck chewing gum over his teeth.
The big turn in the story comes when Brice encounters Blanche, a 39-year old single woman who resides in the small village. Blanche is a quirky sort, maybe even more of an odd bird than Brice. She takes to Brice immediately. The eccentric Blanche might just be the only kind of person Brice can relate to in his present, warped state, and he welcomes her into his life. And that’s when things start getting really odd. Because Blanche (a) might be confusing Brice with her deceased father, (b) forms an emotional attachment to Brice, and (c) seems to have gotten inside Brice’s brain, to the point where she knows what he’s going to do before he does it. The relationship that forms between these two oddballs, in the strained circumstances under which their always unexpected interpersonal dynamics play out, is really what makes Boxes go.
Following is part of the text from a Harold and Maude-like scene wherein Blanche takes Brice to one of her favorite local attractions: a junkyard, or “graveyard of objects,” as she calls it:
Blanche suddenly dissolved into tears and began scrabbling around in the mud with both hands, like a madwoman.
“Stop that, Blanche. You might hurt yourself. There’s all sorts of nasty things in there.”
“This earth that takes everything away from us and gives us nothing in return!”
Wiping her nose with the back of her hand, she inadvertently gave herself a Charlie Chaplin moustache. Brice burst out laughing.
“What’s funny?”
He picked up a piece of mirror and held it in front of her. Blanche started laughing, too, and all the birds which were picking around nearby flew off, saying to themselves that humans weren’t people you could mix with, that was for sure.
“Brice, promise me you won’t die.”
“I’ll do my best, but . . . “
“Don’t believe what they tell you. There’s nothing above us, and nothing beneath. Just us, here and now, like survivors of a shipwreck.”
Garnier’s noir novels have been favorably compared to the work of Georges Simenon, in particular Simenon’s edgier crime novels, or his romans durs. Like Simenon, he wrote with a deceptive simplicity. His books are easily approachable yet ultimately disturbing. He makes you comfortable with blasé descriptions of his characters’ doings, then he makes the room in your brain go spinning when he describes abrupt, extreme actions these seemingly sleepwalking people take. He drops brain-bending, jarring lines and passages like they’re afterthoughts. I see the likenesses between his writing and Simenon’s; and I also note a similarity between his work and French New Wave cinema, as well as early Wim Wenders films such as Alice in the Cities and especially The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick. What all of the above have in common is a freshness of perspective, a daring willingness to look at our world and its people in unbridled ways. If it’s true, as Thoreau put it, that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” Pascal Garnier’s novels explore what people do when their desperation suddenly gets not so quiet.
I’ll close with a random assortment of lines and passages from Boxes that I found striking:
Both strategically and philosophically, his position was untenable, so he decided to go out for a coffee while he waited for the world to end.
It was hard to imagine the love child of a vegetable mill and a pair of skis.
The church clock hammered eleven times, using his head as an anvil.
The editor’s letter came to rest on a pile of envelopes he had not bothered to open. He stretched out on his camp bed and said to himself that this would be a good day to die.
TV was TV. It was not what it showed you that mattered but the way you looked at it, like the ever-changing patterns of a kaleidoscope. It could still be watched when it was switched off.
Quoted: "There is also a strong atmospheric tone to much of Too Close to the Edge. Some of this ambience is sensuous, and some of it is sinister. That duality is an essential quality of Garnier’s writing."
Fri
Apr 1 2016 3:00pm
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Fresh Meat: Too Close to the Edge by Pascal Garnier, translated by Emily Boyce
Brian Greene
Too Close to the Edge by Pascal Garnier is a tale of retirement and calm domesticity, with a hint of menace about to explode (Available in ebook format today, and in paperback on June 14, 2016).
I’ve written about Pascal Garnier here before, so I am going to skip right past any kind of overview of the Frenchman’s writings. If you care to read my general thoughts on his work and a breakdown of a handful of his novels, see this previous post:
See also: Bleak Existentialism Meets Grisly Crime: France’s Pascal Garnier
Instead, I’ll get right to the point in commenting on this latest in Gallic Books’ series of new English translations of Garnier’s novels. Published in its original French in 2010—the same year Garnier died at age 60—Too Close to the Edge is in keeping with the author’s m.o. of being set in a provincial area of France. Also like much of Garnier’s work, the story involves people who are having life-changing/personality-disintegrating experiences in the remote locale.
This is a novel that to tell much at all about its plot would be to commit spoilers for readers new to it, so I will keep the story rundown to a minimum. There are several key characters, but the most central one is a 64-year-old widow named Éliette. Élitte’s husband, with whom she shared her life with for 40 years, died from cancer, roughly a year before the events of the story take place.
She has gone ahead with the plans they made to move from their home in the Paris suburbs, and relocate to what had been a kind of hobby/vacation residence for them on a former silk farm out in the country. At the outset of the tale, Éliette appears to be just reaching the point where she can overcome her grief and enjoy the quietly idyllic lifestyle that is available to her in the sleepy town. Her children call her at times—and on occasion, visit with their own children—and she does some socializing with locals she’s come to know over the years; but otherwise, the widow is free to take the days as they come and enjoy some peaceful solitude.
Or so she thought.
All at once, certain things happen together that shake up her existence: the son of her closest friends in the small town dies in a car wreck and a strange man and his enigmatic daughter (or is she actually his daughter?) enter her life. And, to say that those two phenomena might be related in ways not immediately apparent to Éliette is not to reveal anything readers won’t learn for themselves through the first few chapters of the novel. Ok, I’ll leave the storyline there.
As is true of Garnier’s other novels, Too Close to the Edge has a page-turner aspect to it, with its intriguing, suspense-inducing narrative and its multiple plot twists. But—for me, anyway—the primary value of the book is not in the details of its story, but in the beauty of the writing. All of Garnier’s stories contain unexpected, offhanded but penetrating strings of sentences and passages that make my brain feel fuzzy in a nice way. In the case of Too Close to the Edge, I’m talking about moments like these:
“Of course it was madness, but that was exactly what she was missing: a touch of madness to stop herself from sinking into reason.”
“She sat down and poured herself a tea with such delicacy that she chipped the cup.”
“Some people have dogs for companions; he’s got his tiredness.”
“They didn’t say a word to one another, looking straight ahead to the future that already belonged to the past.”
There is also a strong atmospheric tone to much of Too Close to the Edge. Some of this ambience is sensuous, and some of it is sinister. That duality is an essential quality of Garnier’s writing. In the midst of passages that involve characters acting in unbridled and violent ways, there is this lush segment:
Éliette had not taken in a word of the news, despite the fact the radio was droning in her ear. They could have told her the world had ended and still she would have carried on sipping her tea, staring into space, lost in thought. A fly was keeping her company, buzzing from one jar of jam to another, totally absorbed in its essential function: eating and washing its sticky feet in the tiny pool of tea beside the teapot. Éliette felt in perfect harmony with the fly. The minimalism of its existence suited her down to the ground. To aspire to more than eating jam and washing one’s feet in tea seemed unnecessary. It had pretty eyes as well, this fly, and wings for which Éliette would have gladly swapped her feet.
Another striking quality of Too Close to the Edge that makes it akin to Garnier’s other stories, is the way its disturbing facets sneak up on the reader. Similar to how this was often pulled off by Georges Simenon, with whom Garnier often draws comparisons, the tale begins on a light note, eases its follower into a comfortable sort of daze, and then, suddenly, somehow, events reach a point where the happenings between the characters have become ludicrous, yet frightening.
Quality-wise, I place Too Close to the Edge around the middle of the pack, within the 10 or so Garnier novels I’ve now read. But if that sounds like slight praise, understand that, for me, middle-of-the-pack Pascal Garnier = superb.
QUOTED: "Despite the very dark nature, Garnier writes beautifully. He captures the scenes in the book perfectly."
The Eskimo Solution by Pascal Garnier
Jeff GrimNovember 28, 2016Reviews
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I recently finished Pascal Garnier’s The Eskimo Solution, a noir novel. It is Garnier’s eighth novel to be published in the U.S. Garnier, who died in 2010, was a leading writer in contemporary French literature.
A bit about the plot from the publisher:
eskimo-solution-coverThe book is about a crime author who while writing during his stay on the Normandy coast, finds that reality and fiction are beginning to overlap. The main character in the author’s latest book, Louis, dispatches his mother and goes on to relieve others of their burdensome elderly relatives.
I usually stray away from noir-themed books due to their very nature, but this book intrigued me based on the plot. Like all noir novels, this is a bleak and depressing story. Despite the very dark nature, Garnier writes beautifully. He captures the scenes in the book perfectly by allowing the reader easily visualize the scenes.
The characters are realistic. Although Louis is a deplorable human being, he is very realistic. Louis is insane, but he thinks he is doing a genuine service to his friends by murdering their elderly relatives. Garnier captures Louis’ insanity and his sincerity in “helping” friends.
The book is a quick read at 136 pages. One final note, the title was confusing to me at first, but made sense once Garnier explains the back story in the book – very clever title.
A dark-themed, but easily readable book.
QUOTED: "Somewhat surreal, and potentially confusing, but then that’s what adds to the intrigue"
Book Review | The Eskimo Solution by Pascal Garnier
This was a Net-galley book I received at the end of Camp Nano, and it will be published this coming Tuesday.
The Blurb
A children’s writer rents a house on the Normandy coast where he plans to write his first crime novel. There, away from his love life, his editor and his friends, he’ll be free to pen the story of Louis, who after killing his mother, is inspired to relieve his friends of their own burdensome elderly relatives.
But even far away from everything he knows, distractions seem to find their way to his door: from his lovable elderly neighbours, to his girlfriend’s tearaway teenage daughter. And somehow, events from his life appear to overlap with those of his imagination…
Pascal Garnier combines the style of Simenon, the insight of Camus with a wit that is all his own.
Translated from the French by Emily Boyce and Jane Aitken
My review
I confess I’ve never read any Simenon and seem to remember not finishing the Camus I tried. This is not a problem if you pick up this novella length story by Pascal Garnier. If you like your stories off-beat you may like this too. One thing you should guard against, though, is being interrupted in the middle of it, since it’s easy to get confused. I made the mistake of taking it as my kindle-read through numerous appointments, since reading in the waiting room is an excellent therapeutic exercise.
One of the difficulties is both the protagonist and the hero of the novel he is writing are called Louis, and although the novel and the actual story are in different fonts (which helps) remembering which is which can be a challenge for those like me with the short-term memory of a woodlouse. However, I don’t think it really matters which is ‘true’ and which is fiction, since both are weird and cross-over with each other. I felt that the fiction was in a more literary style, which was clever, but I may have been reading them the wrong way round at the time. The plots are off-beat, fascinating, and strangely engrossing. It seemed to tail off at the end, and I wasn’t really satisfied with the conclusion, but I might read it again, without unscheduled interruptions, and see what I think. And in any case, it’s a lovely picture of life in France, with some sea and Impressionist art references thrown in.
If you like your crime stories gentle, mystifying and weird, try this!
A novella length story translated from the French. Somewhat surreal, and potentially confusing, but then that’s what adds to the intrigue.
QUOTED: "It’s short, sleek, beautifully written and well translated"
Review: New crime fiction from Robert Harris, Linwood Barclay and Pascal Garnier
MARGARET CANNON
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Nov. 11, 2016 11:04AM EST
Last updated Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2016 2:41PM EST
The Eskimo Solution
By Pascal Garnier, translated by Emily Boyce and Jane Aitken
Gallic Books, 160 pages, $20.50
Aside from the unfortunate title, this elegant little novel is a gem. We don’t get enough French noir these days and Pascal Garnier, justly compared to Georges Simenon, deserves to be discovered. The story revolves around a crime novelist with writer’s block. He goes to the Normandy coast (so well done here that you can smell the salt air) to get on with his current project. The plot revolves around Louis, who decides to dispose of his elderly mother, who has become a burden. That’s where the dreadfully politically incorrect title arrives: Louis’s solution is to simply expose Mom and let her die in what he believes is the “Eskimo” style. Once relieved of his own problem, Louis finds himself assisting others to escape the calls of elderly relatives. What happens is where Garnier shines and I’m not about to give it away, but this is a story about a story about … well, more stories. It’s short, sleek, beautifully written and well translated. I’m hunting for more Garnier books. You will, too.
QUOTED: "this one will help reinforce his cult status among noir fans"
Boxes
Pascal Garnier, trans. from the French by Melanie Florence. Gallic (gallicbooks.com), $12.95 trade paper (176p) ISBN 978-1-910477-04-5
This intense, morbid character study from Garnier (1949–2010) is less noir than gloomy contemporary gothic. Brice, an artist, has moved to a house in the French countryside to await the arrival of his wife, Emma, while he slips gradually into depression and madness. Emma may have been killed in a terrorist bombing of a hotel, but Brice refuses to believe that possibility. He keeps the boxes from the movers stored in one room, rummaging through at random like a hoarder in his lair. Brice takes rare trips into the village, where he gets to know Blanche, who lives alone in a large empty house. Blanche likes Brice because of his uncanny resemblance to her father, with whom she had an unusual relationship. While less exciting than such other Garnier novels as The Panda Theory and How’s the Pain?, this one will help reinforce his cult status among noir fans. (Oct.)
Reviewed on: 08/17/2015
Release date: 10/01/2015
QUOTED: "Garnier makes bleakness pleasurable. It's fun to inhabit such a powerful mental atmosphere, however dark it may be, when it's created with originality and style. And it certainly is with Garnier, whose books start off seeming simple, then sneak up on you."
< Brief And Brisk, The Newly Translated 'Boxes' Is An Existential Pleasure November 4, 20152:15 PM ET 6:21 Download Facebook Twitter Google+ Email TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. The French writer Pascal Garnier, who died in 2010 at age 61, wrote more than 30 children's books, but he's best known for a series of acclaimed novels on the literary end of "Pulp Fiction," that he wrote in the last 15 years of his life. Since 2012, Gallic Press has released seven of them in translation, including "How's The Pain?" "The Panda Theory" and "The A26." The latest one, titled "Boxes," just came out. Our critic-at-large John Powers has read it and says that Garnier is one of those writers who you just keep reading. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: If you ask me the difference between modern American novels and modern French ones, I'd start by saying, the French ones are shorter. Now, I realize this isn't universally true - Proust's "In Search Of Lost Time," makes "The Great Gatsby," look as thin as a SIM card. But where our writers tend to fatten their books in hopes of the Great American Novel, France has a taste for elegant concision that runs from Gide through Camus to the 2014 Nobel Laureate, Patrick Modiano. French readers don't feel cheated if a book runs only 120 pages. For instance, they love Pascal Garnier, the late French writer whose brief, brisk, ruthlessly entertaining novels have been compared to everyone from Georges Simenon and Patricia Highsmith to Quentin Tarantino. His works are currently being rolled out in translation by Gallic Books - seven have been published so far. And I warn you, they can be addictive. A while back, I devoured five in two days and only stopped when my wife asked if I was losing my mind. Garnier's books pointedly avoid the glamorous France we know from the movies, plopping us down in the kind of fallen world you get in American writers like Jim Thompson. His heroes inhabit a France of anonymous villages and sullen, small towns with bad-food restaurants, tacky hotels, garden gnomes, DIY mega-stores and cheapo carnivals. Garnier conjures a world of struggling people who are trapped by their surroundings, by themselves and by fate. It's no accident that his just-released final novel is titled "Boxes." The novel is quintessential Garnier. It's the story of Brice, a middle-aged illustrator of children's books who doesn't like children or the writer whose books he illustrates. But his troubles go far beyond that. Brice's beloved young journalist wife has disappeared in Egypt. And making matters worse, they've sold off their old flat in Paris and bought a house in a village. Brice is surrounded by boxes in his big, empty new house that feels, and I quote, "like being in an aquarium without the fish." To keep himself busy, the shell-shocked Brice does some half-hearted remodeling, begins feeding a freeloading cat and wanders the village having shallow conversations. Things only perk up when he meets Blanche, a single 39-year-old who lives alone in the house she once shared with her deceased father. Clad all in white, she's even more unmoored than Brice, and the two develop a weird chemistry. They dine together on pre-packaged soup and make a day-trip to the city dump - all of which may sound dull but is precisely the opposite. "Boxes," is a real page-turner. As niftily translated by Melanie Florence, Garnier is a surprising, often witty writer whose stories never get predictable. You always want to know what will happen next. He sucks you into the minds of heroes that, like Brice, tend to be lonely souls in high-pressure circumstances, outsiders who range from the dying hit man on his final mission in "How's The Pain?" to the grieving widower in "The Front Seat Passenger," who discovers, after his wife's death, that he's been a cuckold. Shadowed by impending violence, Garnier's books take us inside his characters' hopes and desperation, capturing their dreamy, often amoral sense of reality. His work is thick with noir sensibility, which means it's limited. His slim novels lack the rich sense of life's possibilities that you find in, say, "Anna Karenina." Then again, he's not aspiring to be Tolstoy. Working in the stripped-down tradition of the existential novel, he taps into profound feelings we probably all have from time to time - that we live in a meaningless, even cruel world, one not protected by a benevolent God but mocked by absurd figures like the grinning stuffed animal that keeps turning up in Garnier's book, "The Panda Theory." While I realize this may sound grim, Garnier makes bleakness pleasurable. It's fun to inhabit such a powerful mental atmosphere, however dark it may be, when it's created with originality and style. And it certainly is with Garnier, whose books start off seeming simple, then sneak up on you. They remind me of those expensive dark chocolates that are 90 percent cacao. They can be quite bitter, but once you get used to the taste, you wouldn't want them any sweeter. GROSS: John Powers is TV and film critic for Vogue and Vogue.com. He discussed the work of writer Pascal Garnier. Tomorrow, my guest will be Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang, who co-created the new Netflix comedy series "Master Of None." Ansari stars as an Indian-American actor who's having trouble finding good roles. Ansari and Yang previously worked together on "Parks And Rec." Both of them are the sons of immigrants. Ansari's parents play his parents on the new series. I hope you'll join us.
QUOTED: "This often bleak, often funny and never predictable narrative is written in a precise style"
The Panda Theory by Pascal Garnier – review
Pascal Garnier's posthumously published novel is often bleak, often funny and never predictable
The late Pascal Garnier
'Ruthless wit': the late Pascal Garnier.
Henry Krempels
Sunday 25 March 2012 00.05 GMT
One of three novels by Pascal Garnier to be published in English since the French author's death in 2010, The Panda Theory is a brief depiction of a stranger's arrival in a Breton town. Gabriel is a quietly amicable traveller with a penchant for cooking and inexplicable acts of kindness. Using these talents to befriend the townfolk, he quickly becomes involved in the affairs of a lonely hotel receptionist, a man whose wife is comatose and a woman whose partner has abandoned her. But Gabriel becomes increasingly distracted by past memories and his amiable gestures start to appear contrived; generosity evolves into cruel affectation.
This often bleak, often funny and never predictable narrative is written in a precise style; Garnier chooses to decorate his text with philosophical musings rather than description. He does, however, combine a sense of the surreal with a ruthless wit, and this lightens the mood as he condemns his characters to the kind of miserable existence you might find in a Cormac McCarthy novel.