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Voice Over: A Novel
A lonely young woman works as an announcer in Paris's gare du Nord train station. Obsessed with a man attached to another woman, she wanders through the world of dinner parties, shopping excursions, and chance sexual encounters with a sense of haunting expectation. As something begins to happen between her and the man she loves, she finds herself at a crossroads, pitting h...more
Hardcover, 256 pages
Published
October 7th 2008
by Seven Stories Press
(first published 2005)
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A drunken, almost accidental kiss gives life to the obsession of the heroine of this engaging, intense novel. She is unnamed and the story, like a voice over to a film, is told, in the third person, from her point of view. She had been obsessed with this man for some time, and the kiss is just what she needs to bring hope to her fantasies. He is involved in a serious relationship with another woman who is a foil for the central character, everything she is not, self assured, glibly interacting w...more
One of my new favourites! I spotted this in the fiction section one afternoon - we have only one copy (still in hardcover). Chris was drawn to it because Paul Auster had written a blurb on the front, and an introduction to the work inside. I checked it out of the library.
Translated from the French. An unnamed woman who works as an announcer for the metro at the Gare du Nord station in Paris. She drifts through the city, yearning for a man who is already taken, unnable to resist chance and her ow...more
Translated from the French. An unnamed woman who works as an announcer for the metro at the Gare du Nord station in Paris. She drifts through the city, yearning for a man who is already taken, unnable to resist chance and her ow...more
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I'm told that this book reads better in its native French, but as I learnt little from studying the language for five years I had to settle for the (dodgy) translation. A first person narrative - with no dialogue at all - set in Paris, this book tracks a young woman's obsession with the male partner of a friend. As the story progresses her behaviour becomes more and more unpredictable as she gradually descends into madness. Not quite as dark as it sounds, this book is hardly going to have you la...more
I don’t know her name, I think she is 28, works in Paris' Gare du Nord. It is a job where she sits for hours, reads announcements from the computer, job without a personal touch, without a need for personal opinion, she likes her life in a shadow and doesn’t mind when people call her weird, behind her back.
She loves Him - her friend, and will love him for the rest of her life. Her friend, who is in love with Angela, an angel with wings (you can as well have angels without wings) how she calls h...more
She loves Him - her friend, and will love him for the rest of her life. Her friend, who is in love with Angela, an angel with wings (you can as well have angels without wings) how she calls h...more
Aug 28, 2009
Stephanie
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
found-in-translation
The first memory she has of the man she loves is his "look of distress" when another woman he has been trying to pick up refuses to return his advances: "She thought the idea of being suddenly deprived of the object of his affections must have been more than he could bear just then. And seeing him this way, in love, had moved her."
It is thus that we are plunged into the dysfunctional, lonely world of the unnamed female protagonist of Voice Over, the debut novel of New York-based French journalis...more
It is thus that we are plunged into the dysfunctional, lonely world of the unnamed female protagonist of Voice Over, the debut novel of New York-based French journalis...more
“They have known each other for a long time. She has never quite been able to recall the moment when they met, the place, the precise day, whether she shook his hand or they kissed on the cheek. Nor has she ever thought to ask him. She does have a first memory, though. As she was climbing into her coat in the narrow hallway of an unkempt apartment, she had caught his look of distress. The woman he had flirted with all evening was refusing to leave with him. He was trying to persuade her with an...more
I read this after I read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, and it was a good followup. Both books feature lost characters, reckless acts, and lots of booze, but unlike Hemingway's book, Curiol's was far less depressing. Not that it's any cheerier but, unlike in Sun, there was a sort of redemption for the protagonist in her quest for love and finding her place in the world. Plus the prose is gorgeous (translated from the French). Highly recommended.
Voice Over, by Céline Curiol, translated from the French by Sam Richard.
Deeply dark, at times tragic, Voice Over is an extremely well-written debut novel. Curiol manages to create what seems like a trance-like 255 page sequence. My heart ached for the deeply troubled protagonist.
Best Translated Book of 2008 Shortlist by Three Percent, University of Rochester.
Deeply dark, at times tragic, Voice Over is an extremely well-written debut novel. Curiol manages to create what seems like a trance-like 255 page sequence. My heart ached for the deeply troubled protagonist.
Best Translated Book of 2008 Shortlist by Three Percent, University of Rochester.
I'm partial to French novels that harken back to the type of existential themes that Camus and Sartre used to write. It's about a woman who has a crappy job at a train station working as an announcer. She so wants to connect with others and because she wants to escape her loneliness, finds herself in murky, dangerous situations. It's probably better in the original French but still a good read in English
This was a really tough book to get into...mainly because the main character is such a pathetic woman. She's totally one dimensional -- this wilted thing who puts herself at the mercy of nearly every prick (or homeless man) who wants a piece of her. Meanwhile she has an intense longing for a man in a relationship with someone else, and yet when he comes for her she even screws that up.
Extremely well written but the main character in this novel is difficult to like. I felt a mixture of frustration and pity while reading this. The protagonist is a woman who loves a man who loves another woman. She wanders aimlessly through life in pursuit of his affections without any secure or confident thought in her head. Again, very well written so I would have rated it higher if I wasn't so frustrated by the protagonist.
This book gets inside the mind of its protagonist more than most books I've read. The thoughts and thought patterns of this young Parisian are so authentic and real.
Well written, interesting style, but didn't grab me... Didn't finish.
I thought this book was excellent. I couldn't put it down and I am glad I ordered it from Canada. The character's slow descent into despair and madness is well done and I would buy the next book from this French author without a second thought. It is translated from the French so the writing is a unique style but I loved it.
Mooie vertelling over een onbeantwoorde liefde. Het hoofdpersonage is een jonge, eenzame vrouw die hopeloos verloren loopt in Parijs, maar ook in haar liefde voor een getrouwde man. Mooi geschreven en geloofwaardig...
(gelezen in Nederlandse vertaling: "Parijse Stemmen")
(gelezen in Nederlandse vertaling: "Parijse Stemmen")
A collection of cliches with a formulaic plot passing for literature. Ridiculous and sentimental, not worth checking out of the library.
The story of a woman and her obsession with a married man. Recommended for Francophiles and anyone who enjoys six-page paragraphs.
This is the sort of main character I've liked in the past, but this time I just didn't care.
Parijse stemmen by C
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Studied at Université Paris Sorbonne.
Is a journalist who has worked for various French media, including Libération, Radio France, and BBC Afrique.
Curiol lives in New York City.
More about Céline Curiol...
Is a journalist who has worked for various French media, including Libération, Radio France, and BBC Afrique.
Curiol lives in New York City.
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