Holding a suspension of disbelief as to how an amusement park employee (the unnamed (at first ten-year-old) narrator's equally unnamed father) could find the money to go around the world and hunt game, or that the same (slightly older) girl can afford to pay an emeritus professor to give her advanced physics lessons out of what she earns through babysitting, this is still some story.
And the fact that it pays off, that the reader continues to read with great relish, is testimony to Dieudonné's writing skills. So what is this about? Well, anyone who glances at the blurb can see it's about a family who live in a house with four bedrooms: the narrator's, her younger brother Gille's, her parents', and that of 'the bodies'. We later learn that the bodies are of wild animals as the father – whose is interested mainly in hunting wild animals, watching television, drinking Glenfiddich, but above all controlling his family: he's a self-obsessed tyrant. And he's very violent towards his wife, whom the narrator calls an amoeba.
The book, however, isn't just about a dysfunctional family, but also about a highly gifted young girl growing up, how she copes with her many problems, even how she attempts to solve them by wishing to turn back history to before a specific traumatic moment in childhood. I'm not too sure what you're left with after the end, but the journey through the novel is rivetting enough.
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