“The flavour of that first kiss disappointed me, like fruit you taste for the first time. It's not in new things that we experience the greatest pleasure, but in habit.”
This is a tale of around 200 pages that took me a year to finish. Why? Well may you ask.
Having studied French at University many years ago, I thought it might be interesting to read this in its native language. My first mistake was trying to do so on my mobile phone. While I began reading in January and had only slightly progressed, it seemed sensible in November to abort my original idea and just read the story in English.
Interesting things that I noticed were the original language seemed so much more dense, funnier and interesting. Somethings got lost in translation. Admittedly my translation skills were somewhat below par so I had quite a few questions that the English version ironed out for me, and yet I really noticed how the colour dissipated somewhat in switching from French to English. Like watching a colour movie on a black and white television.
A teenager falls for this older girl who is engaged to someone else. Her fiancee goes off to war and he moves on in. Their passion is all consuming and while they initially try to keep things hidden, a pregnancy is just one reason to up the stakes. I love this guardian review that describes the narrator as “a very self -aware little shit”, his behaviour was so irritating. He claimed to be all consumed with love for a women he continually puts at risk. The humour can be found in his florid protestations of passion and moral dilemmas which don’t really ring true based upon his actions.
In any case, this had some entertaining moments but I’m not sure that justified almost a year’s worth of angst in trying to read it in the original language.
4 out of 5
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