03
Jean-Christophe Valtat
Translated from the French by Mitzi Angel
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Translation 2010
Ms. Hen found this book on her bookshelf recently, and she
had no idea how she had acquired it. She has read many books through the years,
and bought many, and some have found their way to her. She discovered that she
had bought it five years ago, but she has no memory of it, so she decided to
read this mysterious short novel.
Ms. Hen read this book in one sitting, taking one huge breath
and diving underneath, not coming up for air until she was finished. She almost never
does this. There is something about this book that lends itself to be read this
way: there are no chapters, and there aren’t even any paragraphs, it’s one
continual idea flowing through.
The story is about a teenage boy looking at a mentally
challenged girl, wondering about her life, and if the possibility exists of her
ever loving him, or him loving her. The novel is beautifully written. It takes
place in the 1980s, when there was no Internet and teenagers had to entertain
themselves at home with their records and books.
It seemed to Ms. Hen that the only time this novel could
have taken place was the 80s, a time of disenfranchisement for the youth, when
they had no real connection and not much knowledge of the outside world. Ms.
Hen remembers what this world was like. And she remembers being like this boy,
thinking strange thoughts, not the exact same strange thoughts, but her own.
Young people, in the age before the Internet, had to think
their odd thoughts in their personal vacuums. And they held the possibility that anything
could happen. Ms. Hen thinks that the youth of today do not know what it’s like
to be alone with disturbing thoughts constantly because there are so many
ways of being stimulated externally.
This novel brought so many questions to Ms. Hen’s mind. Why
does this guy want this mentally challenged girl to love him? Is this the only
way he thinks he can be in love? Will he ever do anything about it? Ms. Hen was
sure the boy would never do anything about it, because he did not seem unstable
to her.
This novel takes place in suburban France, and it seems
similar to the suburban U.S. in the 1980s, but with more machismo. The
boy is delicate, and that is not seen as strong enough in his culture. The boy
seems to want to dominate the girl he is watching, but he knows he never can bring himself to do such a thing.
Ms. Hen was excited to find one place where chickens were
mentioned in this lovely novel. The boy was describing the mentally challenged
children, and how they reacted to playing a soccer game again the local police
club, “…where we face opponents not only incapable of grasping the simple rules
of the game, but what’s more, who were seized by panic and ran all over the
place like decapitated chickens.”
Ms. Hen loved this book so much, and she found herself in
it, twisted as that may seem. Ms. Hen thinks that this book would be a huge
cult book that all the hipsters would like if they got their hands on it. But
maybe they have. Ms. Hen is not a hipster, she is a purse with good taste.
Ms. Hen waves her five feathers high in the air for this gem.
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