French Exit by Patrick Dewitt

“She had occasionally in her life found herself loving men not in spite of but for their stupidity. Suavity was never more than playacting, she knew this, and it endeared them to her that they themselves were unaware of their transparency.”

About three quarters of the way through this book I was thinking this could be the perfect antidote to today’s troubled times. The bizarre relationship between Frances and her son that has developed since his father’s death has seemingly infantilised him. He almost floats around rather than has any direction, while his mother brings an air of entitlement and decisiveness. It seems she’s spent all the inheritance and now must leave her Upper East Side Pad for a cruise to Paris and a new life.

She’s being haunted by her ex-husband in the form of a cat called Little Frank and her son’s dalliance with a psychic on board the ship to France is a catalyst for an increasingly weird set of circumstances that will have you laughing, shaking your head and then, unexpectedly left rather low. The writing is delightfully catty — pun not intended — cocktails amid a riot, poverty at the Four Season, in some ways it’s a kind of coming of age story – albeit at age 30 in Malcolm’s case. He resembles the kind of guy that people’s parents thank the stars is not their son, probably the kind of guy I’d usually date — sidebar the lockdown has the fantastic benefit of providing a respite from all the wrong individuals.  You get the extent of their weird relationship via the dialogue which is limited but so telling. For instance, upon hearing that Malcolm has bedded Madeleine the Medium, his mother says, “Did you do a good job?”, consoling herself that he’s probably only good at one thing and that wouldn’t be such a bad thing to excel at.

Back to the novel, though, it is fantastically written. I am not a cat lover but adore the craziness of Little Frank’s sad adventures in Paris. The crazy characters, the heightened surrounds and the family dysfunction that provides a deep dose of dark humour make this a great read. 

5 out of 5 – some mothers do ave em.