Psycho-Noir

Blurbs and reviews keep referring to this book as "noir", but I think that's a bit misleading. "Noir" usually brings to mind tales of crime, crooked deals, good men doing bad things and the women who love them anyway. Lots of gaudy patter and complex, tight plots that circle back and punish the just and unjust alike. That's not exactly what I found here.

What I found is dark, but it's dark in a different way and for a different reason. Our hero, Gabriel, was once sublimely happy, but for reasons that slowly become clear cannot ever be happy again. So, he makes others, strangers, happy. And then makes sure that, unlike himself, they will never lose that happiness or ever become unhappy again. Gabriel is graceful, kind, patient, detached, emotionally desensitized, and in, but no longer of, this world.

There were many aspects of this book that drew me in. First off, there is enough reserved menace and cool detachment to Gabriel that he presents as something of an unexploded bomb, and so there is an immediate tension that just builds as the story passes. On an entirely different level there seems to be something of an ongoing joke. While many readers noted that this is somehow a quintessentially Gallic book, it reminded me of another, entirely different French genre ripe for parody - namely, the manic pixie dream girl who swans about Gay Paree with chocolates or cute berets or whatever, whimsically spreading joy and light to all she meets. (You know who you are Amelie.) Well, this book is the antidote to all the Amelie's out there.

But much more than the plot, or the build up of noir tension, I just enjoyed the odd bits of dialogue and the witty, precise and piercing throwaway comments, descriptions and observations. Almost every page has an arresting line or a thought-for-the-day you could put on a calendar for recovering depressives. This author can make walking in the rain feel like a reason to live, or a reason to die, with a flick of his pen. That is admirable and remarkable, and was reward enough for this reader.

(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)