A very happy World Book Day!
On this March 1st, the Book Office wishes you a happy World Book Day!
... Who said that it was only about children's books? For this special day, we knocked on the doors of our favourite London bookshops to give you their selections of the best French book of the year. Here's what we got. Given the ratio of murders happening in these pages, we'd rather you don't read them to your little ones.
Dulwich Books recommends...
by Leïla Slimani
translated by Sam Taylor
Faber & Faber 2018
Without a doubt, the most outstanding novel published so far this year, in any language is Lullaby by Leïla Slimani. Ostensibly a thriller, we are told the plot outcome on the first page, so it is a ‘whydunnit’, an excoriating study of poverty, class, race, gender, parenting (especially motherhood), the bourgeoisie, how our capitalist, colonialist societies insist that the labour of childrearing must remain invisible in the workplace. All told in shimmering prose, brilliantly translated into English by Sam Taylor.
- Susie
Caravansérail recommends...
by Leïla Slimani
translated by Sam Taylor
Faber & Faber 2018
My favourite French book recently is 'Lullaby' by the oh-so talented French-Moroccan author Leila Slimani and translated by the brilliant Sam Taylor. A gripping and tightly constructed narrative about a bobo young Parisian mother and her seemingly perfect nanny that explores motherhood, guilt and power relations and leaves you with one question: why? Chilling and absolutely fascinating.
- Laura
The European Bookshop recommends...
by Jean-Paul Diderlaurent
translated by Ros Schwartz
Pan Macmillan 2017 The charming new novel from the author of The Reader on the 6:27. From an unusual and somewhat taboo subject matter, Jean-Paul Didierlaurent extracts all the ingredients for the ultimate feel-good novel. Taking us beyond the clichés, the novel's kind-hearted and quirky characters embark on a morbid road-trip, on a quest towards a peaceful ending, in more ways than one. Strewn with optimism, warmth and humour, The Rest of Their Lives is a real lesson in living and loving. And who better than an embalmer, a home carer for the elderly and a couple of old eccentrics, to help us reach into ourselves to find the true meaning of life, love, and death?
- Amélie
Savages: The Wedding by Sabri Louatah
translated by Gavin Bowd
Corsair 2018 The Wedding is the first volume of the Savages Quartet, a political thriller series set between Saint-Etienne and Paris against a feverish electoral context. While Arab candidate Chaouch appears a clear favourite in the presidential election, drama runs deep in the Nerrouche family, busy organizing the titular wedding. As the novel sets a complex background and weaves the intricate ties between the characters of this tense criminal saga, the suspense steadily spirals upwards towards a cliffhanger ending, which will leave you biting your nails while eagerly waiting for volume two of the series...
- Amélie
Laëtitia, ou La fin des hommes by Ivan Jablonka
not yet translated
Seuil 2016 Ivan Jablonka is an historian better known for his works on the Holocaust. For this book, awarded the Prix Médicis in 2016, he researched the story of a young woman, Laëtitia, murdered by a man she befriended. This sad story could have gone unnoticed, just one amongst the hundreds of women killed every year, yet it made the headlines, her battered body becoming a battleground for politicians. The author meets her twin sister, Jessica, and unpicks their lives, where abuse is the main thread, from a neglectful and abusive birth father, to a coercive and abusive foster father. Although Laëtitia unwittingly becomes an emblem of the violence against women, a victim, the author resuscitates her voice, her walk, her talk, her hopes and she dances across the pages. After her sister's death, in a "me too" movement far from the red carpets, Jessica overcame her conflicted loyalties to her foster father and reported him to the police. This is an uncomfortable read, if necessary.
- Marie-Paule
Read also: Ivan Jablonka, A History of the grandparents I never had, Stanford University Press, 2016
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