I have yet to be disappointed by a release from Pushkin Press and The Mystery of Henri Pick is no exception. This is a lovely lovely book. The language and storytelling are relatively simple and there is quite a cast of characters. I found myself desperate to know how everyone's story resolved and very happy with the resolution. There is a lovely twist and the ending left me smiling.
The story is a literary mystery and features real characters and institutions from the world of French publishing. For the first few chapters I wondered if I was reading a novelisation of real events. In the current uncertain world, Henri Pick is a warm and funny story about books and the people who love them.

This is a charming, literary mystery, which revolves around a library of rejected books. This is, of course, a delightful idea for all book lovers – a library of, ‘the world’s literary orphans.’

When one of these titles, written by a deceased cook, becomes a huge success, it leads to an investigation into how the mysterious author could have penned this brilliant novel. There are an enormous amount of characters, all wrapped up in a wonderful French setting, who are involved, in some way or another, with the novel. Also, there is much about publishing, and all that entails, which is both amusing and also interesting.

I enjoyed the twists and turns of this mystery, but I also enjoyed the sense of place and character. A really enjoyable novel, full of French flavour. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

I loved every moment and every aspects of this bizarre book: the style of writing, the stories and the characters.
It's the first I read by this author and won't surely be the last.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

'"What do you do?"
"I write."
She gave him a look of dismay.'

OK, what's not to love about this: a book by a French author from the ever-wonderful Pushkin Press, in a new collaboration with Walter Presents; a book about books and publishing and what books mean to people; quirky and endearing and full of vulnerable, real characters....

Without having really done any research in advance, the minute I started reading this I felt that it could easily be a film. And, heck, if it wasn't written by a screenwriter and, yes, they actually made a film of it last year (2019), the book being originally published in French in 2016. Sometimes that is a bit of a downer, when a book *reads* exactly like a screenplay - but this doesn't, and retains its bookishness (?) throughout.

In a corner of a library in Crozon, Brittany lies a section for rejected manuscripts, never having seen the light of day. One of these is 'discovered' by an editor for a Paris publishing house, visiting her parents who live locally, and all manner of goings on are unleashed. The supposed author of the book is one Henri Pick, the late co-owner of a local pizzeria, whose creations included, amongst others, a Stalin pizza and a chocolate pizza - but his widow remains pretty unimpressed when the book takes the literary world by storm. A wonderfully eccentric cast of characters include a washed-up literary journalist, Pick's daughter, the current curator of the library and various others who, for their own personal reasons, want to find the truth. All of them, in some way, are changed by the events that unfold as the novel progresses. Relationships are healed, new beginnings are made, people confront their demons and gain the confidence to start afresh.

And throughout it all David Foenkinos has great fun with the whole literary world, shamelessly name-dropping authors and bursting the balloon of pretentiousness. There are various footnotes sprinkled throughout, little comic touches that add a whole different framework for the book. And it is is full of understated comedic observations, such as:
'Writers are so happy at the idea of performing a household chore. They like to counterbalance their airy wanderings with something concrete.'
The 'idea' of Henri Pick's book becomes something more important than the book itself, somehow, and at the centre of this search for the truth is the figure of Jean-Michel Rouche, for whom it becomes something of a quest - and in so doing, discovers himself. But, is the truth actually the real truth?

Quirky, endearing and suitably twisty, this is both a light-hearted romp that is also a love song to books and those of us who love them. It's exactly the kind of book to put a smile on your face. God knows we need that nowadays. Just wonderful. 4.5 rounded up to 5.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

This is a strange and delightful book. I thought I had the measure of it when I first started reading, but I really didn't at all. It surprised me in all sorts of ways and I loved it. It's really a series of love stories and stories about love lost and found and discovering who we are and what we want, with a literary puzzle thrown over the top.

Way to hit the ground running. It seems that Pushkin Press, a publishers I often turn to for spreading my literary wings a little, often with much success, have teemed up with 'Walter Presents' – the thread that Channel 4 TV in the UK have of picking up European broadcasting (and then hiding them online, having shown one episode on free-to-air as a teaser). This is the first book chosen for the collab, and it's absolutely superb.

There really must be something in the French waters, for this has many of the hallmarks of Antoine Laurain, the well-known provider for Gallic quirks, that often dip into his past life in antiques as a wellspring for his ideas and characters. Well, this book could be seen as if it were him doing that, but dipping instead into the world of books and publishing – and dialling everything up to eleven. So there are copious references to authors, publishers, and other characters you may or may not have heard of (none of which matters), and even footnotes giving us some extra information here and there. This is a book about books, and about libraries, and about writing, and about life, and for once, unlike many such volumes, you don't really have to be a fan of any of the above, for this is so good it's not confined to preaching to the converted. It's a book that manages to include no end of cliché, and implausible combinations of event and people, and it still manages to get away with it, partly because it seems to carry such a winsome yet sincere grin.

I'm guessing I ought to do the token thing of divulge some of the plot, but I came to this completely blind, only clicking download because it was from Pushkin and the 'Walter Presents' badge also intrigued. So I will provide a summary of the set-up in a paragraph below, but I got so much fun out of these pages knowing so little about it, and I feel it ought to be the same for you, dear reader. I wish you could take my word about it being a brilliant discovery about a brilliant discovery. But if you do need a precis, then here it is.

The next young thing in publishing, who has fallen in love with one of her authors only to see his debut novel flop big time, finds that her parents' local library in Brittany, France, has a section where failed authors have been able to donate unpublished books they've had rejected by the professionals (the book tells us there's a real one in North America too, and the idea is lifted from the words of Richard Brautigan). Scanning through it they find a marvel – a little book that combines heart-wrenching evocation of the end of a romance but also the death of Pushkin, the Russian poet. The thing gets published to great acclaim – but how on earth could it ever be reconciled with the man assumed to have written it, who was a workaholic and seemingly not literary pizza maker? The book concerns the revelations that that bizarre happenstance leads to – and also the surprising effect his lost tome has on everyone connected to it and his family.

An unexpectedly light and humorous offering by Foenkinos, satirizing the pretentiousness of the Parisian literary society. Could a pizza maker who never was seen reading a book truly have written an almost perfect novel? Erudite, charming, delightful.

Charming and ever so slightly comical story,of a book that's found in a library of rejected manuscripts.
Who was the author?
Could it be proved or disproved?
I enjoyed the stories connected to the main one,how the books discovery touched so many lives,some in a good way,some not.
Pleased to have an answer at the end too.