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A French Life (Hardcover)

by Jean-Paul Dubois (Author) "AND my mother fell to her knees ..." (more)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £14.99
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Hamish Hamilton (26 July 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 024114339X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0241143391
  • Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14 x 3.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 692,902 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Book Description

The runaway French bestseller – a comic, tragic, epic novel that brilliantly blends the personal and the political

Product Description

Meet Paul Blick, fifty-something, with a life both ordinary and extraordinary, and driven by a need to know how he’s ended up where he is. Navigating his way through an alternately tragic and joyous youth, Blick finds himself cast up on the shores of adulthood – and there begins the sexual adventures which characterize much of the next four decades. As his life moves from one episode to another, so the political scenery behind him shifts, reflecting both a nation in flux and a man desperately trying to make sense of the forces that have shaped him.
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Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
AND my mother fell to her knees. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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2 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Clever M. Dubois, 1 Sep 2008
Dubois, like his hero, was born in 1950 and the novel details the history of France and the French from that era, uptil the present day. Cleverly, he links each new Presidential reign with a different period in his main character's life, chapter by chapter, showing how an ordinary Frenchman, trying to get on with his life, is affected by political developments and cultural change.

His hero, and it's the same character in all his books, is here called Paul Blick, and like Dubois, lives in Toulouse. He is an 'everyman' figure. He has problems in his marriage, with his family,with his dentist (sadistic dentists also always appear in Dubois' books !).

Dubois is wonderful at showing the humourous side of life, even in dark times. Paul is long-suffering, put-upon, endlessly resourceful and never loses his sense of the ridiculous, his own ridiculousness as well the riduclous in other people. He has numerous more or less successful sexual liasons, some of these are very funny and eventually, a successful career as a photographer of trees. Throughout France's 55 years of political change, the backdrop of the novel, Paul remaims a socialist and tries to be true to his 1960's beliefs and background as a student radical and '68 activist. Though his attempts at this life-style go sadly wrong.

If you are interested in France, its recent history and politics, this is a readable, enjoyable book. There is a cast of odd, funny and interesting characters and Paul is so likeable, so endearing that despite all that goes wrong for him, you keep hoping he will make it in the end. There are dark moments, this book is not entirely comic but Paul deals with everything life throws at him with generosity and compassion and resiliance.

You learn a lot about France and how it came to be the country it is today in this book, too, and about the French, manners and customs. You also learn from Paul's sense of the richness of life as well as its darkness and regret.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Just read it, 3 Aug 2007
By Pastor Luke (Brighton) - See all my reviews
Many contemporary novels disappoint - overhyped, poorly written pap. but there's some really good stuff coming out of France at the moment (Jean Echenoz for example). 'A French Life' is the work of a real writer. Solid, humane, wise. Be prepared to do a bit of work yourself but you'll be richly rewarded.
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