A Leopard-Skin Hat
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3.1 • 7 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A quintessential early novel about an intense friendship, by the winner of the 2020 Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
A Leopard-Skin Hat may be the French writer Anne Serre’s most moving novel yet. Hailed in Le Point as a “masterpiece of simplicity, emotion and elegance,” it is the story of an intense friendship between “the Narrator” and his close childhood friend, Fanny, who suffers from profound psychological disorders. A series of short scenes paints the portrait of a strong-willed and tormented young woman battling many demons, and of the narrator’s loving and anguished attachment to her. Anne Serre poignantly depicts the bewildering back and forth between hope and despair involved in such a relationship, while playfully calling into question the very form of the novel. Written in the aftermath of the death of the author’s little sister, A Leopard-Skin Hat is both the celebration of a tragically foreshortened life and a valedictory farewell, written in Anne Serre’s signature style.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Serre's searching, poignant latest (after The Beginners) depicts the complex relationship between a man called the Narrator and a woman named Fanny, who remains inscrutable to the Narrator after her death at age 43. The Narrator and Fanny meet and become close friends in childhood, and as adults readers see them traveling to the countryside, going on walks, and playing ludo in the middle of the night. The Narrator remembers small details about Fanny, like how cautiously she changed gears when driving, and the fact that her big toe was "conspicuously longer than the next." But Fanny is defined by "an absence": the Narrator describes her as "at once there and not there." And though he "talked to rouse her, to keep her alive and in the real world, to bring her round from her dreams," the Narrator's efforts, ultimately, are for naught. Serre's novel memorably evokes the slippery nature of Fanny's character in its snapshot-like structure: rather than a more conventional and chronological arc, the story progresses along the winding routes of the Narrator's ruminations. Readers will be moved by this probing story about the unknowability of others.
Customer Reviews
Booker Prize shortlisted?
I've been disappointed in more than a few of the Booker's long-listed books and am near ready to give up on them . . . I read for the simple pleasure of reading or to learn something, broaden my perspective, dispel a bad mood or gloom, solve a mystery or unlock a puzzle, but never to be annoyed by a smart-aleck narrator/author. This novella, which read like a miserably epic tome, annoyed me. The author patronizes, holding the upper hand over her reader, while telling them what they already know—that authors, protagonists, and narrators join together in alliances—some beautiful, some revelatory, some entertaining, some scary, some disjointed and dysfunctional, and others simply meh—like this one. Mental health issues are serious. The author treated it indelicately, coarsely—her sly innuendo that something is amiss in the relationship between the Narrator and Fanny was underdeveloped, thus seeming gauche, if not crude. I’m mad at myself for not trusting my instincts after reading the sample, merely because the book was being touted by the Booker committee. Should you decide to take this book on because it's a short read, be aware, needlessly repetitive and often contradictory, each short chapter is like an eternity in book-years.