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The Birthday Party
Paperback
Mystery & ThrillerGeneral FictionLiterary Fiction
Publisher Price: $18.95
ISBN13: 9781945492655
Publisher: Transit Books
Published: Feb 7 2023
Pages: 454
Weight: 1.15
Height: 1.10 Width: 4.90 Depth: 7.40
Language: English
Awards: Man Booker International Prize
I don't usually go for long books but this one knocked my socks off! A thriller in the literal sense of the word (it is about a home invasion), The Birthday Party is a tour de force of the minutia and monotony of everyday love. Propulsive, ruminative, and chilling. The internal monologue of each charcter in the small hamlet (a husband, a wife, their child, and their neighbor) flows with such ease and grace on the page that you almost don't realize you've slipped from one person's head to the next. Slow-paced yet painfully suspenseful. Each moment expands exponentially into beautiful, sinous sentences. For anyone who enjoys international literature, especially if they like Knausgaard's My Struggle but wish it had a teeny tiny bit more plot. -Annie
2023 International Booker Prize, Longlist
New York Times Editors' Choice
A real-time study in crippling self-consciousness, the fragility of normalcy, and the reality of violence.--The New York Times
Buried deep in rural France, little remains of the isolated hamlet of the Three Lone Girls, save a few houses and a curiously assembled quartet: Patrice Bergogne, inheritor of his family's farm; his wife, Marion; their daughter, Ida; and their neighbor, Christine, an artist. While Patrice plans a surprise for his wife's fortieth birthday, inexplicable events start to disrupt the hamlet's quiet existence: anonymous, menacing letters, an unfamiliar
a nightmarish chain of events.
Told in rhythmic, propulsive prose that weaves seamlessly from one consciousness to the next over the course of a day, Laurent Mauvignier's The Birthday Party is a deft unraveling of the stories we hide from others and from ourselves, a gripping tale of the violent irruptions of the past into the present, written by a major contemporary French writer.
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