Consolation by Anna Gavalda: review

By Amanda Craig 630AM GMT sixteen March 2010

Consolation by Anna Gavalda

Consolation is a novel that, in French, equates to a play-off compare in in between the losers in a diversion of boules. Charles, the favourite of Anna Gavaldas book, is a successful architect, all the time on the move from continent to continent, whose in isolation hold up is unsatisfactory. One day he receives a minute containing 3 difference Anouk is dead, and his hold up falls to pieces.

For Anouk, a beautiful, vital, inexhaustible helper and the mom of his disloyal crony Alexis, is "the Madonna of his childhood", and the lady who taught Charles about life. The dual boys had turn friends at 6 and stayed close until assorted catastrophes, that we find in the march of the novel as it weaves in in between past and present, pushed them apart.

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Charles hasnt seen Anouk for decades, and his benefaction partner, Laurence, thinks he contingency have had a "Mrs Robinson thing" when she learns of her existence.

Charles, though besotted with Anouk, had selected not to have sex with her when it was offered. Yet she has one after another to paint hold up to him and when she dies, carrying committed suicide, and is buried in a prosaic cemetery underneath the name that she hated, he finds himself so dreaming that he scarcely gets run over.

How his hold up is incited around again by descending in love with the right woman, Kate, whose big family and nation lifestyle is what he needs, is the things of romance. Gavaldas initial novel, Hunting and Gathering, additionally took the fortitude of personal predicament by love (and food) as the theme, but was implausibly soft-focus. This is darker, in contact with on midlife crisis, the loser and bereavement. Charles is really majority the decent, agonised veteran chairman informed from French films, and customarily played by Daniel Auteuil. He loves American jazz, Tintin, goes to select restaurants and is conveyed about Russia by a chauffeur. Yet Anouk has since him a being check from his beginning days. In revelation him about death, and carrying a transvestite as her babysitter, she has uneasy his required upbringing. Her radical toasts, her contrary bangles and her extreme integrity not to let patients die have her a impression who fascinates the reader as well as Charles.

Unfortunately, all this is buried in a majority unhelpful miss of structure, and a lush character that all the time trips you up. The interpretation has Charles think "By Jove" and contend that "I cant penetrate it any more". The story, conveyed in a reduction of third person, initial person, omniscient narrator, flashback, flash-forward, stream-of-consciousness and more, is, at 473 pages, far as well long. Our balding 47-year-old heros basin is roughly as vapid to review about as his emancipation is clichd the pleasing Kate, a crony of Alexis, appears as an Englishwoman finish with chateau, Aga, goat, hens, dogs, llama and most desirable children. Naturally, it doesnt take prolonged prior to love and sex and a new hold up beckon.

Gavalda writes friendly fiction, with copiousness of culture, tension and observance but, as with Hunting and Gathering, her standing as an general bestselling writer is mystifying. Neither her character nor her storytelling skills crop up to clear Consolation being promoted here by a rarely reputable edition house. It could be that Gavalda is not well served by her translator, but her novels pretension at slightest should be notice enough. This is in truth a play-off; sadly it does not come off.

Consolation by Anna Gavalda tr by Alison Anderson 473PP, Chatto & Windus, �12.99

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