A French Novel

(Paperback)

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Already a huge hit in France, the new novel from Independent Foreign Fiction Award-winning author of Windows on the World.
In his most autobiographical text to date, Beigbeder recounts his stay in a French police cell in January 2008, after he was arrested for snorting cocaine off a car bonnet outside a nightclub in the super-chic 8th arrondissement of Paris. As he lies in the cell, he revisits his childhood, from the carefree days when his grandfather taught him to skim pebbles at the beach in Cnitz, to his parents divorce, the conflicting influences of his hedonistic father and studious, seemingly conventional brother who has it all, and his own first, unrequited loves. This patchwork of memories is as much a portrait of the era as it is the story of a fragile, self-critical man who has finally dropped the mask.

Sharp, witty with a particularly pitiless irony directed at himself and yet tender, A French Novel is a gem. Beigbeders reminiscences, his search for answers in the lost country of his childhood, will speak to a whole generation searching for its soul.

Reviews

From the reviews of A French Novel:

Frdric doesnt just remember his childhood, he relives it in sensuous detail though the book grows rich with Frdrics nostalgia and regret, it is consistently witty in tone Beigbeder has a unique sensibility After its cerebral beginnings A French Novel builds to an emotionally luscious conclusion Evening Standard

Beigbeder is a wind-up merchant par excellence yet, despite his persona of a finger-stabbing pub bore, he has a fine line in self-deprecation as well as any number of caustic quips Metro

Cooler, self-mocking, but heartfelt as well as ingenious, Frdric Beigbeder's A French Novel sees the French enfant terrible take his brief detention after a drugs bust as the cue for a romp, both comic and melancholy, though his own career of excess consumption, and that of postwar France Independent, Books of the Year

Author Bio

Frdric Beigbeder was born in 1965 and lives in Paris. He works as a publisher, literary critic and broadcaster.