This book was intensely disturbing but addictive. Such a unique concept / thought experiment to explore, and the classic French writing style was enjoyable as ever, with the cultured Parisian characters and social dynamics a familiar backdrop to this quirky mystery. As the situation escalated I was fully gripped, turning digital pages eagerly waiting for the denouement - which I have to say left me quite shell-shocked in the end!

A tremendous premise that Emmanuel Carrère deftly carries all the way to a fascinating final push. A man tells his wife he's thinking of shaving his mo. Shortly after, in what he thinks will be a hilarious shock to her, he takes the plunge and goes the shave. Only... his wife doesn't notice. Not immediately; not at all. The man thinks his trickster wife has concocted her own hilarious prank by pretending not only that she doesn't notice, but that HE NEVER HAD A MOUSTACHE TO BEGIN WITH. The man becomes more and more annoyed with her... until no one in his life notices his shave. Paranoia takes over and the man suddenly can't quite grab hold of his own reality. It's been called Hitchcockian, and it very much has that vibe. The author maintains interest and keep the reader flipping pages to see what this guy will endure next... and just who is behind the growing, curling, twisting mystery. A great read.

Once again I am indebted to Vintage for bringing a modern classic into English. The Moustache by Emmanuel Carrère smoothly translated by Lanie Goodman. Originally published in 1986 it is the story of a man, the narrator of the story, who decides one day to surprise his wife and friends by shaving off his long standing moustache.
Imagine his surprise and concern when no-one bats an eyelid. Indeed he starts to think that it is a prank by his wife to counter this wanton act shaving the thing off. They ‘pretend’ that he’s never had one and ‘fake’ concern when he demands they give up this act and admit he has shaved it off.
His relationship with his wife becomes tense and estranged. In the ensuing days he feels more or less disempowered and questioning his own sanity as he can find no-one to confirm the moustache ever existed. His journey into self-doubt and mental integrity rapidly degenerates in a matter of a few days. He starts to feel what he took as concrete truth is being eroded. Different and more important parts of his life are erased and he feels powerless to counter thIs alternative reality. While he stills has some control left he flees for his own sanity without thought of where he is escaping to, only to go find sanctuary where his mind can heal and reconnect with reality.

This is a strange book that works on a number of levels but in every way is challenging to read.
We only have the narrator’s testimony and interpretation of events so we believe him implicitly at first. Then the conspiracy he confronts begins to seem less so and we side against him. Thinking perhaps he has embarked upon a one way trip to madness and insanity.

We are along for the ride, cringing at some of his expressed thoughts; questioning his logic but remaining sympathetic in the main as his known memory gets erased. He seems to value the control and lucid thoughts he has briefly rather than the endless pattern of care in an asylum.

I guess the book is working on this higher plain of what is madness; how would a mental breakdown manifest itself. If the only voice you learn to trust is your own how reliable is that for your own welfare?

I enjoyed the way the book made me look at these aspects of mental health, especially in the intervening years since this book was published we have seen a rise in dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

The stages and reasoning are wonderfully portrayed and the book becomes a compelling read. You wish with the narrator that if his moustache grows back all will be well again.

Some moments of humour amid a dark and confusing path towards a mind devoid of reference points, affirmation and a safe harbour. Made me think and value my memories and the people I love.

I thought that this had an interesting premise but i just couldn't gel with this book. The plot was interesting but the writing didn't do it for me. I liked the overall ideas presented but the writing was missing something and needed to be edited again so that it was completely there for me.

One afternoon a man who has had a moustache for several years decides to surprise his wife by shaving it off, allowing her to see him without it for the first time. However, he is the one who gets a surprise when his wife doesn't comment on his newly smooth upper lip, and when he confronts her about it, she argues that he had never had a moustache in the first place. Is she playing a practical joke on him? Is she losing her mind? Is he?

I had previously only read the 'The Adversary' by Emmanuel Carrere. 'The Adversary' was a true crime book and I enjoyed it immensely so I decided to try Carrere's fiction, starting with 'The Moustache' as it is relatively short.
There were some parts of this story that felt repetitive, or like it was dragging, but overall I really liked it. The entire story, but in particular the intense ending, will stay with you long after you turn the final page.

Thank you #NetGalley and Random House UK for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.

An unsettling novella that starts off with an intriguing premise. Man shaves off his moustache, nobody notices or bats an eyelid. Could it all be a joke? Wife’s a bit of a joker and known to lie on occasion. But what about his friends and coworkers? Why haven’t they noticed anything? The protagonist slowly starts questioning everything, going over and over every single action and reaction in his head, overthinking scenarios in a downward spiral of obsession, paranoia and madness.

It is not an easy read but it is very good. Written back in the 1980s, The Moustache was my first Emmanuel Carrère novel and I’ll defintelly look into his more recent work.

My thanks to Random House, Vintage and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review The Moustache.

A beautifully written story unfolds after one of the all time great elevator pitches. A great insight into how to capture an uncertain voice and a truly mad plot. Carerre constantly has you questioning what you would do in that moment and the lengths you would go to. A scintillating read that makes the reader question the limits of our own understanding of the world seen through the eyes of a single narrator. Skewing the idea of an obviously unreliable narrator, Carrere instead plays with the unknowability of the 'real world' in a novel. We're left unsettled and unsure who is telling the truth and what has really taken place.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is dreadful. I abandoned it out of tedium at 30% but couldn't resist skipping forward to that "shocking" ending everyone talks about, which made me doubly glad I hadn't bothered to struggle through the whole thing. Sometimes even short books are too long. I won't be reviewing it.

The protagonist of Carrère’s novella is a successful, happily married architect. One day he decides to surprise Agnes, his wife of five years, by shaving off his moustache. He waits for her reaction… which doesn’t come. When he presses her to comment about his new look, she insists that he never sported facial hair. At first, he is convinced that Agnes is playing some sort of elaborate joke on him, a perfectly reasonable explanation considering that she is somewhat of a pathological liar. But when friends, colleagues and casual acquaintances also fail to notice the disappearance of his moustache, things take a decidedly disturbing turn. The protagonist is drawn into a downward spiral of angst and paranoia, leading inexorably to tragedy.

Carrère’s The Moustache was first published in 1986 and is being reissued on Vintage in a translation by Lanie Goodman. The novella is based on one simple, surreal premise, developed obsessively in an imitation of the protagonist’s frame of mind. Carrère’s command of narrative tension is masterly. The story has a potential for dark comedy, but its effect is, instead, one of sheer terror. Carrère’s Class Trip which I recently read, is often described as a horror novella and I expressed my reservations about that classification. On the contrary, The Moustache is, in my view, clearly a horror story – its sense of existential dread a strange, unsettling mix of Poe and Camus.

My third Carrere, and my first dud – by a long way the weakest story from him. Which is surprising, considering the opening premise – a couple are clearly getting ready to go out of an evening, when he decides on a whim to do what he has long suggested, and shave off his moustache. Except he doesn't – he does it alright, for the hairy evidence is there, but his wife, their friends, his workmates, all declare he had been clean-shaven all along and there is no change for them to see. Fudging the issue of photos with him in it – we're not allowed to know, if the characters actually look, what they see – we get circuitous argument in his mind followed by circuitous argument in his mind, as he tries to work out whether he's bonkers, or she's bonkers, or whether she's just criminal, or what. He escapes to an extended, equally dull "here's where the author went on holiday" break, before an ending that is certainly incredibly powerful if you like that kind of thing, but just shows the author failing completely to have his usual superlative craft at portraying the darkness of everyday life. I could have skimmed no end of it – and it's not terribly long, either – but I refused, knowing for sure this author would prove the point of all this rambling nonsense. He failed – but at least he provided a great advert for electric and safety razors.

This starts out in innocuous fashion as a man contemplates shaving off his moustache, but from this harmless beginning we soon spiral into a surreal tale of paranoia and existential unease, all of which hinges back on the existence - or not - of some facial hair.

Beautifully controlled, surreal and unsettling, with one of the most shocking, though inevitable, endings I've read, this is Kafka-esque but in a modern sense. Carrere is wholly original and this might be slight in page numbers but huge in impact. Bizarre and rather frightening.