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MAMMALS There
are a number of younger French novelists who seem to be penetrating at
least some circles of American consciousness with a higher-brow Bridget
Jones comic unreliable subjectivity. I've read a few of these
that have been fun-- Amelie Northomb's Fear and Trembling (well, she's
Belgian by birth but lives in Paris); The Mystery Guest; and most
recently, MAMMALS by Pierre Merot. I think THE LITTLE WHITE CAR
by Danuta de Rhodes was a parody of this genre-- it was funny,
anyhow. And I haven't read Hollenbeq yet but he's the most famous
of them all.
MAMMALS is a fictionalized memoir told in a very arch third person omniscient. The author ridicules himself at a distance. He refers to himself as "the uncle," and recounts his life story as a denunciation of his own habits, values and failures. It's mostly about what drinking does when it becomes the main goal of one's life, but the author's savagery in excorciating himself (hilariously) permits him to lob grenades at every imaginable contemporary target. MAMMALS calls into question the imperative to reproduce while at the same time ridiculing those who never manage to accomplish it. It's mean-spirited, but at least it's sincere in its despair. --C. B. Coble |