Description
The second volume of the collected works of 'the true heir to Simenon', the late French noir writer Pascal Garnier.
'Deliciously dark ... painfully funny' New York Times
Enter the world of Pascal Garnier, where life's misfits take centre stage, there is drama in the everyday and the unexpected is always just around the corner.
Volume 2 includes Boxes, which tells the story of Brice, 'the sole survivor of the natural disaster that at one time or another strikes us all, known as 'moving house''; The Front Seat Passenger, in which a widower discovers his wife had a lover and decides to track down his widow; The Islanders, whose protagonist Olivier finds himself thrown back together with a childhood friend with whom he shares a dark secret; and Moon in a Dead Eye, in which the paranoia of the residents of a gated retirement village spins out of control.
Dark, funny and shot through with menace, these perfectly crafted novellas of Gallic noir are also affecting studies in human alienation.
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. Melanie Florence teaches at the University of Oxford and translates from the French.Emily Boyce is a translator and editor. She was shortlisted for the French Book Office New Talent in Translation Award in 2008, the French-American Translation Prize in 2016, and the Scott Moncrieff Prize in 2021. She lives in London. Jane Aitken is a publisher and translator from the French.
Reviews
Deliciously dark ... painfully funny' Marilyn Stasio, New York Times 'Brief, brisk, ruthlessly entertaining ... Garnier makes bleakness pleasurable' John Powers, Fresh Air, NPR 'Wickedly fun ... wonderfully dark' The Complete Review 'Readers will relish the late Pascal Garnier's graveyard humorous dark French noir' Midwest Book Review 'Exquisite noir' Publishers Weekly 'Garnier plunges you into a bizarre, overheated world, seething death, writing, fictions and philosophy. He's a trippy, sleazy, sly and classy read.' A. L. Kennedy 'A dark, richly odd and disconcerting world ... devastating and brilliant' Sunday Times 'Marvellously unpredictable' The Guardian 'A mixture of Albert Camus and JG Ballard' Financial Times 'Makes you grin as well as wince.' Sunday Telegraph 'Garnier's take on the frailty of life has a bracing originality.' Sunday Times
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