Monsieur

by Jean-Philippe Toussaint

En está breve novela, Toussaint subraya, en filigrana, lo absurdo de nuestra condición con un humor impasible que ha hecho recordar al Kafka de Informe para una academia, al Melville de Bartleby, a Keaton y a Tati. Monsieur no quiere problemas ni le apetece contar lo que hace. Hace lo que puede y logra encontrar una solución a menudo elegante, incluso matemática, para las dificultades de la vida cotidiana —parar un taxi, por ejemplo—. Aunque no sabe decir que no, lo que siempre provoca problemas. Un personaje sin identidad particular, un hombre sin cualidades ni deseos, la mayor parte del tiempo Monsieur no hace sino estar sentado en una silla. En los momentos más intensos, en el colmo de la excitación, sube con su silla al tejado para mirar el cielo, pero sin escrutarlo con excesiva atención, temiendo, sin duda, alterar el curso de las constelaciones. Espectador puro, Monsieur no hace sino esperar que se instale el reino del azar, que es el desorden, tal como enseña la física moderna, tan frecuente y divertidamente evocada a lo largo del relato. «Habría que remontarse a Paul Valéry para ver desarrollarse, en una novela, una tan formidable reticencia a expandirse. Por su banalidad pregonada, por su rechazo indefinido de ser “algo”, por su indiferencia con los detalles (pues ya reina sobre el todo), el personaje de Toussaint nos hace pensar irremediablemente en Monsieur Teste, de quien podría ser un hijo natural o un hermanito taimado.» (Vincent Candel, Le Magazine Littéraire) «Con tres novelas —El cuarto de baño, Monsieur, La cámara fotográfica—, Toussaint ha impregnado la literatura de los ochenta.» (Michel Paquot, Studio Magazine) (Fuente: Editorial Anagrama).

Genres: France, Fiction, French Literature, Belgium, Novels, 20th Century, Literature

67 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Jean-Philippe Toussaint (born 29 November, 1957, Brussels) is a Belgian prose writer and filmmaker. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and he has had his photographs displayed in Brussels and Japan. Toussaint won the Prix Médicis in 2005 for his novel Fuir. The 2006 book La mélancolie de Zidane (Paris: Minuit, 2006) is a lyrical essay on the headbutt administered by the French football player Zinedine Zidane to the Italian player Marco Materazzi during the 2006 World Cup final in Berlin. An English translation was published in 2007 in the British journal New Formations. His 2009 novel La Vérité sur Marie won the prestigious Prix Décembre.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

There he is, Jean-Philippe Toussaint's natty twenty-nine year old Monsieur on his way to his office where he will carry out his job as a commercial director for Fiat France.

If you're up for action and adventure, thrills and chills, sizzling romance, a rollicking roller coaster ride of corporate intrigue or sex, drugs and rock 'n roll, I'm afraid you must look elsewhere.

One can imagine the fate of Monsieur if Georges Simenon (likewise a novelist from Belgium who wrote in French) picked out Monsieur to be a protagonist for one of his psychological novels (roman durs) - Monsieur would undoubtedly be forced to deal with a disaster that would strip him of comfortable routine and push Monsieur to the edge. Authors, really.

No, no - Jean-Philippe Toussaint does not write that type of novel. Not even close. The author told an interviewer: "Nowadays, the novel is the only literary genre that is visible, available to the public. If I’d lived a century earlier, I probably would have written poetry." We believe you, Jean-Philippe! With its sparse length (100 pages) and precise, clear-cut language sectioned off into short paragraphs on small pages, Monsieur is a tiny step removed from a book of interconnected prose poems.

And most definitely not that type of novel in terms of subject matter. Through character and context, Jean-Philippe Toussaint analyzes our modern, urban life in its most regular, repeatable patterns. We follow Monsieur as his moves and muses at work, in different apartments, visiting a friend, babysitting his nieces, attending a party.

At his Paris office on the sixteenth floor of the Leonardo da Vinci Tower where he's been working for the past three years, Monsieur has become rather well liked within the firm. Monsieur drinks a cup or two of coffee in the morning and usually goes to the ground floor of the building in midmorning, making his way to the cafeteria "where he bought a packet of chips, paprika chips, for example, why not, which he opened while resuming his leisurely walk."

Did you catch the free indirect style in the above quote, that is, the way the third person narrator dips into Monsieur's thoughts? This subtle "why not" sets the tone for the entire novella - unlike the usual deeper plunge into the interior of a character, in Monsieur, the narrator touches Monsieur's mindstream with the lightest of taps, as if patting Monsieur with a feather. And the most frequent of Monsieur's reflections? Monsieur's observation on the quizzical, unexpected behavior of his fellow humans - "people, really."

Regarding Monsieur as a person and his interface with others, Jean-Philippe's presentation is understated but oh, so telling, as per one of his short paragraphs:

"Since they had split up, however, his fiancée and he, it was possible that the Parrains had a few qualms about having him stay on. Monsieur, to tell the truth, would have been hard put to say why his fiancée and he had separated. He had followed the whole thing rather from a distance, in fact, remembering only that the number of things he had been reproached for had seemed to him considerable."

The Parrains are his fiancée and her parents. Monsieur has been living with all three in their apartment. Following the separation, although he continues to maintain good relations with everyone, Monsieur is encouraged to find another abode. Time passes until finally Madame Parrain takes the initiative and locates an apartment in the neighborhood for Monsieur.

Does Monsieur's passivity bring to mind another character from a short European novel? How about Meursault from Albert Camus' classic, L'Étranger? Actually, I can think of others novels, including a couple written by Alain Robbe-Grillet. Certainly reasonable associations since Jean-Philippe stated, "I established myself in a European literary tradition, I could even say a French tradition, which started with Flaubert and ended with the Nouveau Roman, a tradition that paid close attention to style and form."

Monsieur originally published in French in 1986 and then in English in 1991 via John Lambert's fine translation. As noted above, Jean-Philippe Toussaint's literary aesthetic is at the opposite end of the spectrum from Georges Simenon but one thing the two authors share in common: the universality of European culture. This to say, although Monsieur published in the 1980s (there's even a 1990 film based on the novel directed by Jean-Philippe himself), next to nothing would change if the tale were set in either the 1960s or within the past ten years.

This universality also includes snippets of social commentary, as when Monsieur, a formidable player of ping-pong, encounters young Hugo who is tops in the game. "Hugo played with perfect skill, supple and agile, lifting, lifting, smashing - unstoppable. Furious, digging in his heels, Monsieur, another man, an ugly look on his face, pulled up his trouser legs and removed his watch to catch his breath." This scene speaks volumes on how much sports and games mean to us modern people. Book reviewers, really.

So, what makes this brief novel an entertaining, captivating read? A legitimate question since Monsieur is an ordinary guy with an ordinary life and mostly indifferent and distant to everything around him. As Ginger Danto wrote in her review for the New York Times back when the novel was first published, "The things that profoundly disturb others, from losing apartments to losing a would-be wife, affect Monsieur rather like mild indigestion."

Much of the answer lies in the tale's wry humor. No small accomplishment considering lackluster Monsieur. When asked: What makes funny fiction funny?, Jean-Philippe replied, "Work, work, work."


Belgian novelist Jean-Philippe Toussaint, born 1957

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quiet little book, Monsieur is a series of vignettes that describes a brief time in the life of an introverted, quiet man. Monsieur is a man of set habits, mild speech, and socially awkward worries. Over the course of the story, several things occur that Monsieur seems to passively agree to let happen to him, with intermittently amusing results. Topics as diverse as the scientific properties of crystals, a lycee in Chartres before the war, physics and time and the soothing capacity of stars are addressed in spare, somewhat disconnected and isolated prose that shows a clear admiration forthe French existentialist masters of the 1950s.

However, this book is far too slight to be compared to those works in anything other than it's clear stylistic heritage. Yet it does have its own virtues. There is an improbable flow to this book despite its disconnected, seemingly somewhat random nature. Toussaint has a way with syntax that allows him to create instantly vivid pictures in the reader's mind with a minimum amount of words. Finally, Monsieur's awkward innocence can be occasionally affecting:

"At Saint-Sulpice Square they sat down on a bench and stayed there for a long moment one next to the other, in perfect silence. The mind's eye, said Monsieur after awhile, the mind's eye. I'm sorry, said Anna Bruckhardt, a bit surprised. No, nothing, said Monsieur. Yes, something, said Anna Bruckhardt. Sight, said Monsieur. The mind's eye, yes. In the opinion of science at least, he added for the sake of honesty, and included with a vague hand motion the Copenhagen interpretation, the Tutti Quanta theory and all that. According to Pirgogine, in fact, quantum theory destroys the notion that physical description can be accurate and that its language can represent the properties of a system independently of observational conditions. Well, well. Beside him on the bench, in perfect evidence, was Anna Bruckhardt's hand."

Didn't that make you smile, just a little bit? This is a book that can and should be finished in one setting on a lazy Sunday afternoon just before the time comes to get up to start dinner. While I don't think that I will, ultimately, find the work itself very memorable, I will remember the mood of still introspection that it induced and may revisit it just to find that again, with Monsieur.

[knig · Rating 5 out of 5]

The eponymous Monsieur wends his way down the Lazy River of life: unencumbered by Qualities, unconsummated by ambition, but concocted of Common and convivial of trite.

Toussaint glorifies a life most banal, a man so unassuming he isn’t assigned a name, a man who perambulates the torrents of the quotidian by bending ‘with the remover to remove’. Have I come across this trope before? A Nonesuch as Monsieur? An ode to the Sublime of Ordinary? No, no, and no: and thus, 5 stars for the novelty value.

I actually hate Monsieur. He works around the corner from me. Uninspired, uninterested, uninteresting, yet affable somehow in a space filler kind of way, He casually promenades upwards whilst the rest of us huff and puff upstream, against the tide, like so much salmon put to race.

Matters proceed at a stately, leisurely pace as Monsieur perambulates about, and Tossaint enchants with the driest, subtlest of humour:

‘There reigned, in Monsieur’s room, an odor of wax mixed with dry semen. Its my mothers room, said Monsieur Leguen in a hushed voice.Yes, I see, whispered Monsieur.’


Mother being an 80 year old scarf wearing pious Catholic. Obviously I honed in on the one semen-tical reference in the whole book: (well, I would), all other amuse bouche punnery is strictly PG.

A pleasure and a gem of abook(let).

[Nathanimal · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's something strange going on in Toussaint. I haven't quite put my finger on it yet, but I love it. Is it the accumulative effect of reading three of his books now, or is it this particular book — I find myself not just a happy reader anymore; I've become infected by Toussaint's peculiar turn of mind, and I need to get a little closer to understanding the main crisis at work in his stories. (Is there a main crisis?) My theory is that this book is a reaction to the mundane rituals and language and objects that eat up so much of our lives, that leave us feeling, somehow, vaguely compromised. Monsieur is not going to take it lying down, though, not him. There's a cheeky aloofness to him that may or may not be a well-veiled contempt for modern living. . . . But then again I don't know. Probably the take-home lesson here is not to make to big a deal of it.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

A charming story evoking The Stranger, with more whimsy and less existential meat.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very French. Cold and impersonal for most of the book, but interesting it it's strangely disinterested manner of delving deeply into the life of a person only known in the book as Monsieur. Like Beckett in someways, but with science thrown in, which I think is supposed to be important, but I just didn't spend enough time thinking about the ramifications of quantum theory on the narrative structure of the book. My loss I'm sure.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toussaint's unassuming hero--known only as Monsieur--embodies what Taoism terms the "uncarved block." Apparently simple-minded and utterly passive, he nevertheless keeps his head above water without effort and comes out of even the worst situations displaying a mystifying sense of contentment. He's a little bit Winnie-the-Pooh, a little bit silent film comedian, and all enigma.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

C'est la vie. It's actually refreshing to have a novel where the lack of a gimmick is the gimmick.

[Burak Kuscu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ne zaman başladı, ne zaman bitti, ne anlattı anlayamadığım bir kitaptı. Mösyö karakteri gerçekten tam bir anti-kahraman. Hiçbir ekstra özelliği yok fakat yine de "bizden biri" hissini vermeyecek kadar toplumun da dışında. Mösyö'nün arka kapakta modern Oblomov çağrışımı yaptığının söylenme sebebini ise anlayamadım. Oblomov'la ilişkisini yakalayamadım açıkçası. Bir kere hareket etmekten ölesiye kaçınan bir tarafı yok. Sadece kayıtsız bir karakter o kadar.

Baskısı olmayan, pek de satmamış bir eser Mösyö. Metni okuyunca gölgede kalmaya devam eder hissi peydahlandı içimde.

Pek beğenmedim.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶]

For some reason this sent me into an unforeseen spiral of despair over the futility of the star rating system. So no stars for you, Monsieur. (But I did like you.)

[belisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

hafif kitaplar daha kolay okunuyor...

bana yeni bir şey söylemiyor yani benim daha önce okuduklarımı okumamışsanız Mösyö size ilginç gelebilir...

[Yiğit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yalnızlığı kovalayan, çeşitli monoton yaşantılardan sıkılan bir adam Mösyö. Ne eski sevgisi ne de eski yaşama ve iş üstünde uğraşma isteği... o bir aylak. Sıkılgan tavırları suratından akan, kendini anlayacak birine rastlamayı kurtuluş olarak benimseyen bir adam. Kendisinin en iyi dostunun kendisinden başka kimsenin olmayacağını, rahat ve gezgin yaşantısıyla kendisini tatmin edeceğini bilen: cebini boş tutmayan âlâ bir işe sahip, terasta her gün özlediği rahatlığa gece ulaşan biri.

Süregelen basit ve duygusuz hayatında en ufak bir sevgiyle karşılaşınca, sevginin değerinin "altın" kadar değerli olduğunu hayatıyla anlatan bir adam Mösyö.

[Peter Zuppardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Afuckingmazing. "At the office, when things weren't busy, Monsieur went downstairs to the cafeteria and read the paper. Across from him in the glass entrance hall, here and there, small flower pots boasted benjamina or papyrus, and two or three receptionists, quite another matter, talked on the telephone behind the circular counter. Often, before going back up to his office, Monsieur, going round the counter, good afternoon ladies, stood for a while in front of the aquarium and watched the fish with his hands in his pockets, never tiring of contemplating the inaccessible purity of the trajectories they traced with such languor."

[michal k-c · Rating 3 out of 5]

A man without qualities for the audience of Tati

[Matilda · Rating 5 out of 5]

a favourite

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

(This review originally appeared on the literay weblog The Elegant Variation on June 16, 2008 aka Bloomsday, which is why it repeatedly references James Joyce's Ulysses.)

Although June 16 is called Bloomsday after the chief protagonist of James Joyce’s modernist masterpiece, you could be forgiven for forgetting about poor old Leopold.

After all, Ulysses’ first hundred pages or so are dominated by Stephen Dedalus, a stretch so stylistically baroque many readers skip ahead to Molly Bloom’s saucy monologue at the end of the book, which most regard as the novel’s most accessible chapter. Then there are those who will tell you that the true central figure of Ulysses is none other than Dublin herself.

Joyce’s chief objective in Ulysses was to create the most complete character in all of literature. Part of the reason why there are so many parallels with Homer’s The Odyssey is because Joyce viewed Odysseus as the man Bloom must surpass if he was to stand the test of time—an Everyman for the ages.

In Monsieur, which was published in France in 1986 and has been brought back into print in English by Dalkey Archive Press, Belgian author Jean-Philippe Toussaint has created an Everyman who is every bit as quirky and compelling as Leopold Bloom—only we know a considerably less about Monsieur than we do about Bloom. Indeed, we don’t even know his name.

Monsieur, we are told, is one of the top Commercial Directors for Fiat France. What that means is irrelevant for what Monsieur does best is escape notice, avoid attention, and work as little as humanly possible. “Monsieur displayed in all things a listless drive.” Ergo Everyman—at least from nine to five.

If Monsieur is invisible at work, he has a knack for getting into trouble once he leaves the office. Scrupulously polite and honest to a fault, Monsieur gets pulled into scenarios he’d rather avoid. He detests confrontations but is blind to the ways he provokes them and Toussaint is remarkably adroit at mining this territory for its comic possibilities.

For instance, when Monsieur moves into a new apartment, he is shanghaied by his neighbor into taking dictation for a treatise on, of all things, mineralology. Initially, Monsieur throws himself into the work so as to be done with it as quickly as possible and the narrative is peppered with the occasional, if not inscrutable, paragraph about geological specimens; but as the project drags on and on, Monsieur’s dictation becomes both stilted and literal:

The interpretation of Greek terms employed to identify the exterior forms of crystals—yoo-hoo are you listening—is in point of fact easy, if not immediate, and presents no difficulty, even for the layman.

No, no difficulty at all for Monsieur but, like Bartleby before him, he’d prefer not to. For Monsieur the only thing worse than working on the book is the prospect of telling his collaborator that he doesn’t want to do it anymore. So he does the only logical thing: he moves.

Like Monsieur, Toussaint’s prose is confounded with contradictions. The writing is stark but dense, elegant yet strangely choppy. It's almost as if Toussaint doesn't want to provide the reader with an unobstructed view of his subject. Even though Monsieur comes off as hapless, he’s imbued with a weirdly magnetic charm the reader is powerless to resist. We never know what Monsieur wants, but we hope he gets it.

One reason for this is Toussaint’s predilection for quandaries of the quotidian. In the afterward to Television, a book that explores the implications of a writer’s decision to stop watching television, originally published in 1997 and re-released in English (again by Dalkey) in 2004, Warren Mott writes:

The fictional worlds that Jean-Philippe Toussaint creates are pleasantly quirky ones, worlds where hopelessly benighted humans struggle with the small vexations of everyday life and where those struggles, described in lavish (and indeed obsessive) detail, gradually assume the proportions of an epic.

As for the accusation that Toussaint traffics in slow motion slapstick and literary situational comedy, he stands guilty as charged; however, he pulls it off with an economy of language one wouldn’t think possible given the unrelenting banality of his subjects and his stories never fail to surprise. Indeed, after Toussaint the work of other so-called stylists seems predictable, labored, and bare.

Joyce would have bristled at such a comparison, but Bloom would have found in Monsieur a fellow practitioner of the art of avoiding conflict.

[Agoaye Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fragments de vie d'un homme ordinaire, parfois même insipide et lâche... En fait il ne se passe pas grand chose dans ce roman pourtant plutôt bien écrit.
Bref, un petit côté vide mais joli quand même, comme un oiseau empaillé...

[Laurent De Maertelaer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Knappe, minimalistische vertelling over een slome moderne man zonder wil of wilskracht. Er gebeurt weinig of niets in deze roman, maar Toussaint slaagt er op wonderlijke wijze toch in de aandacht van de lezer vast te houden. Ik zag ooit - met plezier - de film die Toussaint maakte van zijn eigen roman: dus toen ik een tijd terug tijdens het boekenjagen de roman in handen kreeg, graaide ik die meteen mee. Boek en film, dik in orde.

[Adam Dalva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favorite of Toussaint's - it lacks the romance and wanderlust of his best novellas - but, as ever, his writing is hypnotic and his eye toward crafting scenes is excellent. There are some charming surprises in this lean narrative, which is a bit like The Mezzanine mixed with Bartelby the Scrivener, though not quite as thrilling as that combination sounds. For the completionists.

[Jayden gonzalez · Rating 5 out of 5]

i liked when he would just get up and leave

[Fin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Monsieur became suddenly aware that he was too calm. He knew well enough that he should try to be more annoyed by the circumstances of life, little by little, in steps, to avoid the tension he was storing up exploding all of a sudden with one big bang.

Previously, he could easily have imagined two distinct entities, unhappily abstract, separate at all points, of which one, immobile was himself, who had always been rather sedentary, and the other was time, moving over his body, whereas at present the idea was coming to light inside him that there were not two entities, but only one, a vast movement that bore him irresistibly away.

Love this guy. Toussaint is very funny, very precise, so easy to read and yet not quite like anyone else (like a really nice and ultraspecific vermouth or something). Both slim books I've read proceed from moment to moment almost arbitrarily, at once whimsical and stilted and unhappy to be forced into plot and movement. He's an absolutely modern writer, obsessed with the conditions of modernity (sports, television, travel, office jobs, renting etc) and their impact on a subject, and also with the contingencies of modern science: here astronomy, physics, crystallography. But at the base is the same, unchanging worldview: of the tiresomeness of endless movement towards death (here Monsieur is worried about the turning of the Earth and its speeding up of time, and imagines the starry sky as a great metro map above him). Both the protagonists of this novel and The Bathroom seem to care little about the people around them, generally oblivious of or unbothered by social cues and becoming quickly bored of their companions - but both also end up in the arms of a redemptive woman, this in a moving image of a candlelit powercut night. Monsieur if anything even more aimless and void than his counterpart in Bathroom, but less of a brute and more of a dandy. And who doesn't love a dandy

People, really.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book follows the daily life of a very ordinary young man. Monsieur, a 29-old year office worker, I somewhere in the constellation of lonely-shy-introverted-passive-neurodivergent. He is praised as a good worker, but otherwise people try to take advantage of his inability to say no. His neighbor, Klatz, inveigles him into typing out his boring treatise on geology and gets him invited to an awkward weekend party at the country house of a collaborator. Trying to escape this demanding neighbor, Monsieur considers moving, but realizes just in time that his prospective new landlord expects Monsieur to tutor his son in physics. Monsieur is also called upon to babysit his young nieces. And so on. And when he meets a girl he likes, a girl who is just as shy as he is, he has no clue how to go about it - fortunately, a sudden blackout in Paris helps things along.

I liked the book and its unassuming protagonist. Monsieur may seem like a born victim, but he's not wholly defenseless! The young man whose idea of entertaining his nieces is to talk about quantum physics knows how to subtract himself from situations before they come too unbearable. Also, the cool, detached prose can yet deliver some narrative surprises, delivered like an off-hand remark by a poker-faced comedian. My favorite is the scene where Monsieur, having invited a girl on a date, is unclear as to whether he's supposed to foot the bill or whether they should share the cost of the meal. The girl states politely that she has no preference, and so Monsieur finds a happy medium by paying three-quarters of the meal!

The author is attuned to the small absurdities of daily life. Klatz trying to foist off some dried-out old appetizers on Monsieur, Monsieur committing the social gaffe of beating a distinguished politician at ping-pong...

A short novel about an everyday hero who deals with his social ineptness and loneliness the best he can.. the reader hopes the best for Monsieur.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toussaint is my favorite discovery this year. When I was working in a Tower Records and was duelling with some other guy to see who could be the most pretentious retailer, they brought in a book by a guy I'd never heard of. It looked ridiculous. It was someone only a fucking cool kid would have liked. I was steaming. He played Toto and Brian Wilson on continuous repeat. He was anti-cool. I knew he had won.

For nearly 20 years I have struggled to remember who it was and what book it was when I stumbled on a funny review on one of my favorite books so far this year. I creeped on that person's account, clicked 'follow' and scanned recent reads. And there it was, a book they had just finished had an author who caught my eye. I couldn't quite place the name. The last name started with a 'T' and was French-y. I looked at their bibliography and there it was: THE BATHROOM. I couldn't believe it - this was it. I had found it. This is my third book by him this year and they have all been a treat.

Makes me wish I was friendlier to that other guy back in the day. Would love to talk to him about Toussaint. Youth...

[François · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ik hou erg van de stijl van Toussaint, ook al gebeurt er weinig in zijn romans.

[Jimmy Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok so nothing happens the whole book and not in a good way like Beckett. Maybe it’s all lost in translation.

[edmondegreen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book

[Abigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is really all there is to social reality and life.

[Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ещё один шедевр от Маэстро. Безупречно, ничего лишнего.

[Memed Koz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kötü.
Bir iki durum komedisi an ve diyalog var, fena olmayan. Ama kitabın bütününü sevemedim, okurken pek keyif alamadım. Bu kitaptan 45 dk'lık absürt Fransız filmi çıkar, o kadar. Filmi seyredersin belki ama kitap benim açımdan iyi değil.
Bugüne değin hep beğeneceğimi bildiğim kitaplar aldım, burada da yıldızlar verirken bonkör davrandım o yüzden. Bu kitabı Ayrıntı Yayınları'nın indirimli kitaplar kampanyası içinde 1.5 TL olarak (yazıyla birbuçuk) gördüğüm için almıştım.
İsteyene kargo ile hediye edebilirim.

[Matthew Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The distinctly uneventful narrative of a nameless protagonist's day-to-day-to-day routine. Monsieur, who stumbles into situation after situation without control or ill-will is a kind of silent comedian here as he somersaults through the storyline, each tumble more absurd than the last. Major plot lines include a bruised arm, some serious ping-pong playing, and inadvertently co-authoring an unfinished book on mineralogy. For fans of Jim Jarmusch, Talking Heads lyrics and Jacques Tati's Mr. Hulot