This is a wonderfully quirky tale- part mystery and yet more widely an exploration of human frailties. The story brings together an array of fragile characters and in a warm , often comical way, tells their stories against the back drop of determining who the mystery author of a previously rejected and unpublished book is. In some senses the book feels as those it is being narrated directly to the reader and this hooked me. The individual tales and the lives of those connected directly or indirectly to the book are beautifully described with satisfying conclusions. I have seen the film Delicacy by the author and could envisage the story in a visual form. If you want a book that is a literary mystery but also a journey through life’s challenges , adventures and beauties then take a chance and read this

Every single time I finish a book from David Foenkinos I ask myself if it is possible for this author to write a bad book. Once again I have been proven that it cannot happen.

The Mystery of Henri Pick is a story of a mysterious book found in a library of unsuccessful books. This library, specializing in works that have been rejected by publishers, provides a way for authors to feel accomplished after writing their "masterpiece". Once popular but now forgotten, known only to locals. Here is where a young editor Delphine and her husband (a debut writer with very mild success) find a book that becomes an overnight bestseller. People are drawn to the mysterious story that was allegedly written by a recently deceased pizzamaker. This book proves to be lifechanging not only for the young couple.

There is something utterly charming in Foenkinos' writing style. The smooth way he moves from funny, light dialogues to profound declarations that you will want to write down just to re-read later is absolutely amazing. There is also this narrative that slightly mocks the characters but still remains to observe them lovingly.
In The Mystery of Henri Pick, it's mainly in for of footnotes that add another dimension to the story.

His characters are whimsical and quirky but it rarely feels like trying too much. They are individual yet very distinctive and that still gives them the feeling of being somewhat real. Foenkinos is great in connecting stories of individual characters to create the main story. It's a clever way that creates freshness and therefore it's difficult to become bored reading.

I would recommend trying books by David Foenkinos to absolutely everybody. They are clever, hilarious, and always carry an interesting main idea - the perfect combination.

Many thanks to Steerforth Press and NetGalley for sending me this delightful book for review

In The Mystery of Henri Pick, David Foenkinos uses the thriller technique—the template of a mystery story—to keep his readers interested and at the same time he presents, in a subtle and gently satirical manner, an insider picture of the world of publishing.

Foenkinos introduces several real-life characters into his novel, to the extent the reader is sometime confused as to what is real and what is fictional. There are references to Michel Houellebecq, Laurent Binet, Oliver Nora, the CEO of Grasset and Vivian Maier, an American photographer.

In fact, the novel begins with a real-life American author, Richard Brautigan, who had the idea of creating a library for manuscripts which had been rejected by publishers. Though Brautigan committed suicide in 1984, his fans fulfilled his dream and created library for rejected books in the 1990s.

Jean-Pierre Gourvec, a French native of Crozon, Brittany, decides to replicate this library. So successful was the venture, that the corner created for him at the back of the municipal library turned out to be too limited to house all the books he acquired and hence he moved into a more spacious location and even appointed an assistant by the name of Magali Croze, who took over the management of the library once Jean-Pierre passed on.

The scene shifts to Paris where we meet Delphine Despero, a resourceful, career conscious and very successful editor with Grasset. She has just promoted a novel, The Bathtub by Frédéric Koskas with whom she has also fallen in love. While Delphine and Frédéric spend their summer holiday with Delphine’s parents in Morgan, near Crozon, their curiosity is aroused and they visit the library of rejected books which is still managed by Magali. Delphine and Frédéric discover what they believe is an outstanding novel The Last Hours of a Love Affair. The manuscript bears the name of Henri Pick, a non-entity who never wrote a line, never read a book, ran a pizzeria all his life and who had died two years ago leaving behind a wife and a daughter.

Foenkinos makes a dig at the publishing industry as Delphine shrewdly realises that she can engineer a coup by publishing a novel found in a library for rejected books written by a pizzeria owner—a great selling point. Pick’s eighty-year-old widow, Madeleine, is merely a pawn in her game and Delphine’s mind is already buzzing with royalties, film rights and the secrecy involved in making a splash when the book is finally published. She shows little sympathy Madeleine who is forced to face the camera and be interviewed on La Grande Librairie.

Foenkinos presents another unpleasant character, Jean-Michel Rouche, a former journalist at Figaro Littéraire who wants to make a comeback and who goes through immense trouble to track down the ‘real’ author of this manuscript.

Foenkinos keeps us in suspense till the very end. But the novel is much more than a mere mystery story. The discovery of Pick’s novel affects the lives of several characters lifting them out of the impasse they are facing and brings love and happiness into their lives.

Imagine a library of rejected manuscripts, where failed books find a new home. Actually, it doesn't take too much imagination, because such a place really does exist: the Brautigan Library in Vancouver, Washington, named after the author Richard Brautigan, who invented such a library in his novel The Abortion. In The Mystery of Henri Pick, the librarian Jean-Pierre Gourvec forms a similar collection in his small Breton town of Crozon. For decades, shelves of rejected stories slumber in the back of the town library until, some years after Gourvec's death, something remarkable happens. Up-and-coming young editor Delphine Despero, at home on a visit to her parents, visits the library of rejected manuscripts with her author boyfriend. They discover a remarkable text - a masterpiece, signed by one Henri Pick. Snapped up by the publishing world, this book becomes a sensation, less for its content than for the romantic story of its creation. But how did the late Pick, a humble pizza chef with no discernable literary leanings, come to create such a beautiful novel? As Crozon adjusts to its new literary fame, the novel begins to affect the lives of those connected with it. And then a maverick journalist raises a controversial prospect. What if the novel isn't really by Pick at all?

Jean-Michel Rouche isn't trying to be difficult. He just wants to find out the truth. It hasn't always been like that: in his past life, as a ruthless literary critic, he was notoriously abrasive, shattering pretensions and making enemies without a care in the world, confident that his status would protect him. Now he's just a fading middle-aged journalist with a nose for a story, and he's pretty sure that the mild-mannered Henri Pick couldn't possibly have produced the sensational Last Hours of a Love Affair. But the problem is that the world wants to believe in Pick's authorship. People love the idea of a man quietly writing a masterpiece in the quiet hours between making pizza dough and opening his restaurant. They love the idea that he was blind to his own brilliance, and that he consigned his manuscript to the library of rejected books without even trying to get it published. Pick becomes an everyman: an avatar for everyone who's ever dreamed that they have a novel in them (and haven't we all?). His story gives hope to those whose novels have been rejected, and appeals to the romantics. Pilgrims begin flooding to Crozon's cemetery, to the bemusement of the stolid locals.

And no one, perhaps, is more bemused than Pick's wife Madeleine. Her late husband apparently had hidden depths that he never shared with her. Why? And yet, she begins to think it possible. Couldn't the novel relate to their brief separation when they were seventeen which, at the time, felt like a towering drama? As journalists and TV crews clamour for her story, Madeleine's humble life is suddenly thrown into a new light. And she's not the only one who is changed. The novel begins to shift the foundations of other lives as well. There's Madeleine and Henri's daughter Joséphine, whose husband has walked out on her, whose daughters have moved to Berlin, and whose fragile pride is currently founded on her lingerie shop in Rennes. There's Magali Croze, Gourvec's successor as Crozon's librarian, who begins to reassess her faded relationship with her husband. There's Rouche, whose quest gives his career a much-needed boost and opens the possibility of a more rewarding future. And of course there's Delphine too. The success of Pick's novel has boosted her career and given her reputation new lustre, while her boyfriend Frédéric struggles to get recognition for his own (less glamorous) literary efforts. Every one of these people will be transformed by the story of Pick's novel. Some of them think they can solve the mystery. But who will be proven right?

Foenkinos's novel has been a massive success in France: it's already been turned into a film, which came out last year with Fabrice Luchini in the role of Rouche. Its appeal is obvious: this is a novel written about books, by someone who loves books, for other people who love books. It mixes reality with fiction: for example, Delphine is credited with recognising the brilliance of Laurence Binet's HHhH, which Grasset did indeed publish; and I imagine there are plenty more Easter eggs for those familiar with the world of French publishing. I have a sneaking suspicion that there are also stylistic Easter eggs. I was struck by the frequent use of ellipses to show when characters pause or are silent ('...'). Could this be a playful reference back to the start of the novel, when Gourvec longs for an assistant to whom he can chat about the use of ellipses in Céline? Is this the kind of thing you find in Céline? I suspect it's a literary in-joke - the kind that makes you wonder how many others you're too poorly-read to spot. But I stress: there's nothing pretentious about the novel. It's just a love letter to books of all sorts. Foenkinos tells us about the novels his characters love: Rouche is working his way through Roberto Bolaño's 2666, while (in the 'past') we see Gourvec assessing the visitors to his library and carefully selecting what he thinks will be the perfect book to awaken their passion for reading (he judges that his assistant Magali would adore The Lover by Marguerite Duras). There are lots of references which lead you off down happy rabbit-roles of research: I ended up taking a break about halfway through to listen to Barbara's song Göttingen, after it sparks a host of teenage memories for one character.


I really did enjoy this little book. It's very French in ways I find hard to define: something to do with the cosy languor of small-town life; the focus on middle-aged characters and their romantic tribulations; the joy taken in literature; and the way that a sudden discovery offers a prism for modest people to reassess their lives. In many ways it reminded me of Grégoire Delacourt's The List of My Desires, another novel about a small-town life transformed by unexpected prosperity, although The Mystery of Henri Pick is more upbeat. Credit must go to Sam Taylor for a sparky translation which even adds little verbal jokes that presumably don't work in French ('Delphine could already imagine readings unpicking Pick's life'). It's a pleasure to read: heartwarming, playful, but also sensitive to the hopes and dreams of its assorted characters. And the ending is just perfect. If you're familiar with modern European literature, there are lots of references here to make you smile; but if you just want a good, solid story of love and mystery, this will work equally well. Who doesn't love a story about an underdog producing a masterpiece that takes the literary world by storm? Deliciously Gallic.

As a small P.S., this is the first book in a series that Pushkin will publish in association with Walter Presents, who also work with Channel 4 to 'curate' (I hate that word when used carelessly but here it is accurate) a selection of foreign cinema for their viewers. It looks as though Walter is now turning his eye on European fiction, so I'm keen to see what other little gems they come up with. Bon travail!

This review will be published on my blog on Sunday 10 May 2020 at the following link:
https://theidlewoman.net/2020/05/10/the-mystery-of-henri-pick-2016-david-foenkinos

Perhaps this book is meant for English majors to sit around a discuss what makes a good book? A good story? The Mystery of Henri Pick feels like Daniel Pennac's Rights of the Reader meets a "how to get published" manual for aspiring writers.
Is there a gimmick? What sells a story? Literature is personal, so it would seem that publishers aren't so much concerned with the quality of the writing, but if they can sell the book. Seriously, literature seminars everywhere should read and discuss this book.

???? I didn't finish it. This was WAY too quirky for me. I do enjoy quirky books but this was out there! I could not follow the storyline and comments such as "a young woman with a spectacular body" was offensive to me. As advertised, I did not find it to be a fast paced comic mystery but, a slow, confusing tale of the history of "homeless books" that I did not care for.

This is a reverence to all non-published books. Most if not all authors put their heart into their writing and not being published is certainly frustrating.
The mystery isn't as surprising as it could be, though.
It's somewhat entertaining, but admittedly it would have been even more entertaining if I had known all the references.

Inspired by a Richard Brautigan short story, the librarian of the small town of Crozon in Brittany creates a sanctuary for manuscripts that have been rejected for publication. Years later, a young Parisian editor visiting her parents discovers this secret library and stumbles across a brilliant manuscript: The Last Hours of a Love Affair by Henri Pick, a now-deceased local pizza chef. But could a humble pizza chef have secretly been a genius novelist? As the novel becomes a surprise bestseller in France, more people begin to look into the mystery of Henri Pick to find out.

I read David Foenkinos’ novel Delicacy years ago and it’s a credit to his talent that he managed to enthral me - a guy who’s hardly read any romance novels and basically ignores that genre entirely - with his love story. So I was hoping for a similar experience with his latest, The Mystery of Henri Pick - and was unfortunately let down.

The premise is intriguing if you’re the bookish sort - which I am - and parts of it were interesting. Like the editor, Delphine, discovering the manuscript, how she met her authorial boyfriend Frederic, the occasional revelations about the people associated with the novel, and the growing public reaction to its publication.

But that’s just a small part of the novel - most of it is taken up with soap opera-esque digressions that are irrelevant to the overall story. Like Pick’s middle-aged daughter Josephine rekindling her romance with her ex Marc; Magali, the overweight, older librarian having an unlikely affair with a twentysomething Kurt Cobain-lookalike (that’s literally how he’s described!); and the journalist, Rouche, mooning over his dwindling literary fame. If that stuff was interesting, I would be more forgiving, but it isn’t.

Foenkinos also goes for one twist too many at the end. All that last twist does is underline how pointless it was to focus so much on certain characters’ stories if none of it had any bearing on anything.

Despite the occasional charming element, I was mostly bored with the rambling, often repetitive, and increasingly uninteresting narrative. The Mystery of Henri Pick was a disappointing read - I’d recommend checking out Delicacy instead for a better David Foenkinos novel.

This novel was originally published in France in 2016 by Foenkinos and the English translation is done in 2020 by Sam Taylor and we can only say thank you to Mr Taylor for the fine work that he did in translating this amazing tale from Foenkinos for the English speaking world to enjoy.

This book is the unravelling of the mystery of whether a certain Monsieur Henri Pick (now deceased) was indeed the author of a magnificent piece of literature that sweeps the world with its intense telling of the end of a love affair and the death of Russian author Pushkin. Delphine Despero is the editor who can spot a champion manuscript from amongst the piles and makes the great discovery of Picks book amongst the library of rejected manuscripts in the library in Crozon, and she falls in love with Frederic Koskas, author of the not so brilliantly received book The Bathtub. Taking the manuscript from the library back to her publishing house in Paris, she has it published, after convincing Picks widow that he did indeed write the book, there is cult-like regard for Pick writing the book and the story of the found manuscript as part of the mystic of the novel and a certain level of doubt that Pick was the author as he spent his life in relative obscure mediocrity, making pizzas and living his life with his small family in a small town in northern France. Along the way of the novel, we are privy to the effects that the publication of Picks book has on his family and the members of the town in which he resided which are far-reaching and powerful.

This novel is by turn painful and funny and insightful to the whims of human fancy. It is well-paced, never rushing the story but nor does it ever belabour any one storyline. It is clever in never revealing too much of the mystery and throwing in the odd red herring in the barrel to keep the reader guessing as to the truth behind the origins of the novel. Foenkinos creates an enigmatic story that keeps twisting and turning whilst exploring the publishing world and the gullibility of the buying public and explains why we can have 125 million copies sold of 50 Shades of Grey such as the like that E.L. James produced.

The Mystery of Henri Pick could be viewed as a kind of love story to the wannabe writers of the world and their unpublished pieces that are undoubtedly diamonds in the rough having been overlooked by the publishing world. Its power is in its ability to keep the revelation to the very last paragraphs and they leave the reader shouting with surprise and elation at knowing the truth which is completely unexpected and simply stellar.

Fun, engaging and entertaining, it is worthy of the investment of time to read.

<i>The Mystery of Henry Pick</i> is a pleasant work of fiction about the fortuitous discovery of a masterpiece in the rejected books section of a small-town library. Delphine Despero, an up and coming book editor, and her boyfriend Frédéric Koskas, an unknown author, find the book and its author and then promote the book to bestselling status. <i>The Mystery of Henry Pick</i> is written by David Foenkinos, a screenwriter and director who has 14 novels to his credit.

Jean-Pierre Gourvec is inspired to create “a library of rejected books” in Crozon, Brittany. Delphine Despero, a book editor, happens to spend all her summers at her parent’s home near Crozon. On one holiday with her boyfriend she learns of Gourvec’s library and they decide to visit. While browsing through the shelves they find what they feel is a potential masterpiece. Most amazingly, the author is a man who runs the local pizzeria and has never been known to read books. Henry Pick has died by the time Delphine goes looking for him and even Henry’s wife is surprised to hear he has written a book. Delphine and Frédéric use the circumstances surrounding locating the book to build its notoriety. In spite of all their best efforts there are still detractors in industry who feel that they must solve the mystery surrounding Henry Pick and his hard to believe literary triumph.

The novel is both informative and interesting. I now understand more about book promotion and how the content of a novel is not necessarily why books do well in the marketplace. Now awards, accolades, author notoriety, backstories and reviews make a lot more sense. Content wise, the many twists and turns are part of the book’s salvation and why it is so interesting.

This is a very pleasant story. Many sad people find consolation in each other’s company. Much like the rejected novels, many people who have been cast aside in previous relationships do eventually find happiness. Overall it is very uplifting.

Although overall, I like the novel, I do get lost in all the characters. There are too many side stories. I feel the novel can be shorter and just as effective.

I highly recommend this book to people love a pleasant story with twists and turns. I give it a 4 on 5. I want to thank Net Galley and Steerforth Press for providing me with a digital copy of the novel in exchange for a fair review

The Mystery of Henri Pick is a delightful little novel which is in turns both funny and sad.

There is such a wide array of characters, all of whom are likeable in their own ways and possess a certain charm. The narrative also flows well and ensures the reader is drawn into the mystery and continues to read until the end.

I also both appreciated and enjoyed the humorous footnotes throughout this book which infuses the more serious passages with light-hearted quips.

This is an essential novel for those looking for a quick and intriguing read that will no doubt brighten your day.

I am very grateful to NetGalley and a Pushkin Press for the opportunity to review this ARC.

The mystery of Henry Pick is indeed a mystery which will keep you spellbound to the end. It is a fast paced story which takes a lot of turns. A failed writer and his wife, who is an assistant editor whose main job is to reject unsolicited scripts, stumble across a winning script at unlikeliest of the places. A library, meant for scripts which have been rejected by the publishers too many times for the author to give up and leave the script here probably as a pilgrimage to their writing. The script had name of a deceased local pizza maker who his family thought is not capable of writing even a sentence. Once the book is published, the world can neither get enough of the book nor of the life and times of this unknown and unlikely author.

The book impacts numerous lives negatively and positively with hundreds of curious readers suddenly pouring in this sleepy town changing futures of the inhabitants some who enjoy the limelight and some who avoid it.

This is a beautifully written book, characters who display deep thoughts and pragmatic reactions to situations. Sometimes the characters are too real for comfort of some readers and display flaws that we all have.