French Exit
Ratings33
Average rating3.7
This novel was.....odd. I saw it described as a novel about people you don't actually want to know in real life, and that feels accurate. Humorous enough, and then halfway through there enters and entire subplot about a cat a reincarnation, and that's where I really lost the flow. But I finished it, so that has to mean something.
Zelfs nog even getwijfeld over 2*. De kat is zeker leuk, maar het is me net iets teveel een klucht, waarvan het begin het beste is. Prima tussendoortje, dat wel.
A rich woman and her son have run through their fortunes and they head off to Paris to spend the last little bit of it. They become friends (if you can call it that) with a medium, a private investigator, a widow, and some vagrants, and they have to keep watch on their cat (the rich woman's dead husband) who is always trying to escape or kill himself.
It's a dark, dark comedy (think The Sisters Brothers) and it's probably just me, but it struck me as such a dark comedy that I couldn't accept the humor and I hated whatever sort of philosophical points (if any) that the author was making in the story (even if it was simply that there is none).
I could be romanticising things, but there's something special about picking a book based on it's cover, and enjoying it immensely. This is the second book of 2018 which has caught my eye based on the inclusion of a cat as one of the main characters. I was not disappointed. French Exit is full of wit and charm, but in a Lynchian way which is tremendously unsettling at times. The complexity of these characters kept me wanting to read and discover more about their inner worlds and perceptions of the human condition. For me this read wasn't a rollercoaster of sporadic events, but more a slow, evolving narrative of a vicious socialite of a widow, a despondent young man, and Small Frank the cat.
Note: this could easily be a Wes Anderson film. Fingers crossed.
I was worried about this book at first. Although I enjoyed the beginning of the novel, I feared it wouldn't be much more than a light comedy of manners. I was wrong. deWitt brings in clairvoyants, assorted hangers-on, a mysterious plan, and the adventures of a cat named Small Frank to craft a deeply beautiful novel that's centered on an incredibly engaging character.