How's the Pain?
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
How's the Pain? is an off-kilter, blackly comic novel about an unlikely duo of a soon-to-be-retired assassin and a deadbeat young man, from the 'slyly funny' [Sunday Times] Pascal Garnier.
'Deliciously dark ... painfully funny' New York Times
Death is Simon's business. And now the ageing vermin exterminator is preparing to die. But he still has one last job down on the coast, and he needs a driver.
Bernard is twenty-one. He can drive and he’s never seen the sea. He can’t pass up the chance to chauffeur for Simon, whatever his mother may say. As the unlikely pair set off on their journey, Bernard soon finds that Simon’s definition of vermin is broader than he’d expected ...
Veering from the hilarious to the horrific, this offbeat story from master stylist Pascal Garnier is at heart an affecting study of human frailty.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First published in France in 2006, this low-key thriller from Garnier (1949 2010) captures in gem-like detail the final assignment of an aging hit man, Simon Marechall. Simon engages 21-year-old Bernard Ferrand to be his driver, though he's repeatedly exasperated by the na ve young man, wondering if Bernard is simply too dimwitted to act as a prot g . En route, the pair encounter a number of distinctive characters, including Bernard's dotty mother and a woman named Rose, who resides in a seaside bungalow in Cap d'Agde and sets her eye on Simon. Only now working their way into English translation, Garnier's crime novels add significantly to the latest renaissance for this type of dark narrative. As translator Boyce slyly notes in an afterword, "noir may just be the new black." Indeed.
