French Exit
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3.8 • 172 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and an international bestseller, Patrick deWitt’s brilliant and darkly comic novel is now a major motion picture starring Michelle Pfeiffer.
Frances Price — tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature — is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there’s the Price’s aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts.
Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit. One ocean voyage later, the curious trio land in their beloved Paris, the City of Light serving as a backdrop not for love or romance, but self-destruction and economic ruin — to riotous effect.
Brimming with pathos and wit, French Exit is a one-of-a-kind “tragedy of manners,” a riotous send-up of high society, as well as a moving mother and son caper which only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute. A finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and an international bestseller upon its original publication, French Exit is now a major motion picture starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges and with a script by Patrick deWitt.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Evoking Henry James' bittersweet novels of social disaster and P.G. Wodehouse's riotous comedies, French Exit had us howling with laughter and full-on cringing, often on the same page. Frozen out of Manhattan society following her husband's scandalous death, no-nonsense widow Frances Price uproots her coddled adult son and resourceful cat for a fresh start in Paris. As the trio’s new life quickly turns both farcical and tragic, the cracks in their once-glamorous façade become impossible to ignore. Just as in his comic western The Sisters Brothers, Patrick DeWitt shows enormous sympathy for his flawed characters.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this entertaining novel (subtitled a "tragedy of manners") that lampoons the one percent, deWitt (The Sisters Brothers) follows the financial misfortune of wealthy widow Frances Price, a magnetic and caustic 60-something New Yorker who has spent most of the fortune her late lawyer husband amassed defending the indefensible. Insolvency comes as a shock to Frances despite repeated warnings her financial adviser about her extravagant lifestyle. She reluctantly accepts an offer to occupy a friend's Parisian flat and sets sail with her rakish, lovesick son, Malcolm; her house cat, Small Frank; and her last 170,000. On board, she concocts a secret plan to spend every penny, while Malcolm befriends a medium who can see the dying (they're green). In Paris, the book finds its surest footing, as Small Frank flees and a lonely neighbor connects Frances to a doctor, his wine merchant, and a private eye, who locates the medium to contact the cat, who may hold some secrets. The love of Malcolm's life and her dim-witted fianc also arrive, as does the owner of the now extremely crowded flat. DeWitt's novel is full of vibrant characters taking good-natured jabs at cultural tropes; readers will be delighted.
Customer Reviews
a cute misfire
there’s something sad about the misfire that is The French Exit — not so much the fact that its bullets have no target, but that the author wields it with zero aplomb. a frail attempt at deadpan without an iota of funny. and just when you start to get to the groove of its docility, DeWitt conjures up a charade that sucks you into its nihilistic thrill. it makes for a nice ending, but does little to redeem the rest of the book prior.
Nice start
Half the book caught my attention, a kind of leaving-Las-Vegas story ( great movie with Nicolas Cage and Elyzabeth Shue by the way), a star for this; I started to like these two pathetic characters and their witty dialogue, another star; Paris, one more star; the bunch of renegates in Paris, one star; but unfortunately, the very stupidities at the end with the cat and all.: they lost me along with two stars
Started well but fizzled out
Perhaps I do not understand the genre that DeWitt was apparently emulating here but where the book was fascinating in its development of characters and setting in the first half I found myself losing interest after the revelation about Frances’ cat. I was also morbidly put off by Malcolm and couldn’t imagine anyone loving such a louse as him.