David Foenkinos: Le Potentiel érotique de ma femme (2004)

I suppose many of us, at least at some time or other of our lives, have collected something: stamps are a classic example, but then there is the almost pathological collection of train numbers, postcards, whatever. In my time I've collected beer mats, beer labels, matchbox labels, yoghurt containers, crisps packets, but I was defeated when it came to hat pins.

However, having in parts enjoyed David Foenkinos's La Délicatesse, I thought I'd give him a second chance with this: the back cover enticed me with its lists (Foenkinos, as I've mentioned before, is fond of lists) of things that protagonist Hector has collected: election campaign badges, cocktail sticks, rabbits' feet, melon labels, birds' eggs, and so on. The one-line paragraph that he then started to collect his wife didn't deter me, but maybe it should have.

We have Hector at the beginning failing to kill himself after failing a collection competition, then trying to reabilitate himself by going cold turkey on collecting. It seems to work as he meets a young woman who seems similar to him in that they're both learning about the USA in an attempt to convince others that they've really been there. This even provides Hector with the opportunity to start a new career teaching people how to be mythomanics, and this all seems promising in spite ot the weird false starts to the book, the odd sentences that somehow don't seem to fit anywhere, just don't gel. Trouble is, the lack of gelling continues.

More than halfway through, the narrator says 'We should always die in groups, like on a package tour'. Yeah? Two pages later he says that Hector's wonderful soup-making mother Mireille, who has difficulty recovering from the death of her husband, is given a sachet of soup: 'All these years she had bought, washed and peeled dozens of millions of vegetables to, on the moment of her husband's death, discover that our modern society provides delicious ready-made soups.' (OK, we'll allow for satire, but....) 

But this book continues to describe how Hector moves on to be spellbound by his wife cleaning windows, his obsession with her cleaning windows by collecting on film the moments that she cleans windows, and then everyone likes her cleaning windows, his friend Marcel's partner Laurence likes to feel his balls when they're alone in the kitchen (although that's another issue, as is his stripping naked after dinner and asking the others if they think his cock's small), and oh, is this book dead on its feet, as boring as hell. I never want to read another David Foenkinos book. I feel better for saying that.

My David Foenkinos posts:
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David Foenkinos: La Délicatesse
David Foenkinos: Le Potentiel érotique de ma femme

David Foenkinos: La Délicatesse (2009)

There are many perceptive observations in this book. Foenkinos's main character is a woman, and certainly his feminism ­is evident — the way, for example, he dissects (and as a result excoriates) the transparent lust-driven subterfuges of Nathalie's boss Charles, or the way in which he delineates her grief. And the repercussions of François's death are seen at work not only as a catalyst in Charles's inappropriate moves toward Nathalie, but also in the shock of the florist who drove the crash van, and even in her unsatisfied customer who didn't see his floral marriage proposal delivered, this burgeoning love of course serving as a counterpoint to the brutally ended marriage. Violence can be inadvertent and ironic, as in the staff, out of respect, not touching Nathalie's desk during her three months' absence, but forgetting that the calendar still marks the day before tragedy struck, when François was still alive.

At the center of the novel is Nathalie's coming alive again in her growing love for the rather odd Markus, a Swede who isn't ugly but certainly not handsome, with a strange dress sense and slightly eccentric behaviour. But he has an unexpected — and highly unlikely — effect on Nathalie: this man has no edge, and his inventive humor makes him fun to be with.

Foenkinos is noted for his novels of love interest and his humor, but the serious and the playful perhaps don't gel too happily here, and there are a number of infelicities, mainly in the gimmicks: rather silly footnotes, a brief theater scene that is relevant but seems incongruous, chapters of lists (football matches, people's zodiac signs, maxims by Cioran (a Foenkinos favorite), a quotation from Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch, parts of Alain Souchon's 'L'Amour en fuite' (two chapters), songs by John Lennon (another Foenkinos favorite), definitions of délicat from Larousse, etc).

A curate's egg.

Addendum: This book has been adapted into a movie starring Audrey Tautou, directed by the author, and called Delicacy in English.

My David Foenkinos posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
David Foenkinos: La Délicatesse
David Foenkinos: Le Potentiel érotique de ma femme