And Their Children After Them
'A page-turner of a novel' New York Times
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- 3,99 €
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- 3,99 €
Publisher Description
'[A] page-turner of a novel . . . I couldn't put the book down' - New York Times
'A multi-viewpoint panorama of thwarted aspirations, spiced with breathy sex scenes and nostalgic detail.' - Mail on Sunday
August 1992. Fourteen-year-old Anthony and his cousin decide to steal a canoe to fight their all-consuming boredom on a lazy summer afternoon. Their simple act of defiance will lead to Anthony's first love and his first real summer - that one summer that comes to define everything that follows.
Over four sultry summers in the 1990s, Anthony and his friends grow up in a France trapped between nostalgia and decline, decency and rage, desperate to escape their small town, the scarred countryside and grey council estates, in search of a more hopeful future.
Nicolas Mathieu's eloquent novel gives a pitch-perfect depiction of teenage angst. Winner of the Prix Goncourt, it won praise for its portrayal of people living on the margins and shines a light on the struggles of French society today.
'Deeply felt . . . An exceptional portrait of youth' - Irish Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mathieu's stunning, bittersweet Prix Goncourt winning English debut follows a teen boy through four summers in a dreary valley in eastern France. In 1992, 14-year-old Anthony schemes with his friends to ogle sunbathers at a "bare-ass" lakeside beach while echoing their parents' racism in response to a neighboring boy's recent drowning ("Everyone naturally figured the Arabs had done the deed, so people kind of hoped for a settling of scores"). Anthony's solitary yearning emerges in staccato lines ("At night, wearing headphones, he sometimes wrote songs. His parents were jerks"), and his restlessness is reflected in Mathieu's shaggy, aimless story. Anthony's and his friends' repeated adolescent male behavior hanging out on the beach, drinking, trying to hook up with girls is depicted in beautifully observed detail, while Mathieu's unblinking descriptions of Anthony's parents, H l ne and Patrick, a fading beauty and a hard-drinking racist beaten down by their dead-end blue-collar jobs, give the novel greater impact. Anthony's provincial story is bookended by moments the release of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and France's World Cup victory that stir him, but don't change his life, and he has little to look forward to beyond the poverty and bleak outlook of his parents and friends as he enters adulthood. Mathieu's subtle craft will enrapture readers and appeal to fans of douard Louis.
