The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Stéphane Michaka's Scissors.
A 2012 French novel that's already available in English translation in 2013 -- how is that possible ? It is a rarity for any but the biggest authors' books to appear in English translation so quickly -- but the opening lines of the jacket-flap copy help explain, as it is a novel: "Based on the life of the great short-story writer Raymond Carver".
I'm curious how big a selling-point that will be for American audiences -- is that the secret for foreign authors: they should write books about Americans ?
(But what is it with the French and based-on-real-people-fiction recently ? There's Laurent Binet's (bafflingly) much-praised HHhH, there are recent prix Goncourt winners like Jacques-Pierre Amette's Brecht's Mistress, Jean-Jacques Schuhl's Ingrid Caven, and Gilles Leroy's Zelda Fitzgerald novel, the still untranslated Alabama song. And, of course, Jean Echenoz has been on a whole tear of these sorts of novels -- Ravel, etc. It almost makes you wish for the heyday of autofiction .....)
A 2012 French novel that's already available in English translation in 2013 -- how is that possible ? It is a rarity for any but the biggest authors' books to appear in English translation so quickly -- but the opening lines of the jacket-flap copy help explain, as it is a novel: "Based on the life of the great short-story writer Raymond Carver".
I'm curious how big a selling-point that will be for American audiences -- is that the secret for foreign authors: they should write books about Americans ?
(But what is it with the French and based-on-real-people-fiction recently ? There's Laurent Binet's (bafflingly) much-praised HHhH, there are recent prix Goncourt winners like Jacques-Pierre Amette's Brecht's Mistress, Jean-Jacques Schuhl's Ingrid Caven, and Gilles Leroy's Zelda Fitzgerald novel, the still untranslated Alabama song. And, of course, Jean Echenoz has been on a whole tear of these sorts of novels -- Ravel, etc. It almost makes you wish for the heyday of autofiction .....)