Not Everybody Lives the Same Way
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- 3,99 €
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- 3,99 €
Publisher Description
"Richly engaging . . . Skilfully translated by David Homel" - Michael Arditti, Spectator
"A touching tale of a beleaguered dreamer . . . Lightness balanced by glints of harsh realism, a combination captured perfectly in David Homel's translation" - Financial Times
***WINNER OF THE PRIX GONCOURT***
Paul Hansen is in prison. He's been in prison for a couple of years now, sharing a cell with a huge Hells Angel with a fear of mice and an intense love of Harley Davidsons, who often reminds Paul that he could kill him at any moment.
But life wasn't always like this. Before prison, there were his parents: Danish pastor Johannes and free-spirited Anna, the proprietor of a controversial art house cinema in Toulouse. There were his friends in the Excelsior, the block of luxury flats where Paul worked officially as a caretaker, and unofficially as a restorer of souls. And above all, there was his partner, Winona, a daring seaplane pilot, and their beloved dog Nouk.
Many of them are dead now: his parents, his friends, Winona and Nouk. Paul can still talk to them though; they appear in his dreams, as ghosts in his cell, breaking up the monotony and fear of his life behind bars. But Paul knows he cannot be released until he shows remorse for the crime that led to his imprisonment. And, even with his freedom at stake, for some things, true remorse is too high a price to pay. . .
Translated from the French by David Homel
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dubois's engaging but oddly inert Prix Goncourt winner sees a middle-aged man recall his life from prison. Paul Christian Frederic Hansen, a longtime apartment building superintendent, is serving two years for an undisclosed crime in Montreal. His cellmate is Patrick Horton, a member of the Hells Angels awaiting sentencing for murdering a fellow biker. In between chronicling Horton's struggles, which include a toothache, fear of rats, bowel movements, and anxiety over haircuts, Hansen examines his past. He grew up in Toulouse, France, where his Danish father, Johanes, was a Protestant pastor and his French mother, Anna, ran an independent cinema. His parents divorced after Anna screened Deep Throat in 1975, and Johanes moved to a small mining town in Quebec, where Hansen soon joined him. Dubois gets things off the ground with his portrayal of Johanes, whose loss of faith and a gambling problem cost the pastor his job; his subsequent death costs the novel its most intriguing character. Hansen moves to Montreal where he takes up the superintendent job and meets his wife, who flies a float plane. Bland interactions with building residents, plus wiki-deep digressions into miscellany like subprime mortgages, drag the plodding plot toward the inexorable reveal of Hansen's crime. In the end, this comes up short.
