What do you think?
Rate this book
Múttan
Hvað gerir 53 ára gömul ekkja sem á engin eftirlaunaréttindi? Hún hellir sér að sjálfsögðu beint út í glæpastarfsemi. Patience Portefeux á tvær dætur í háskólanámi og aldraða móður á elliheimili. Lúsarlaunin sem hún fær sem túlkur hjá dómsmálaráðuneytinu duga fjölskyldunni engan veginn og útséð um að nokkuð sé hægt að leggja fyrir til efri áranna. En dag einn kemst hún á snoðir um yfirgefna hasssendingu og þá stígur hin harðsvíraða glæpadrottning Mútta fram á sjónarsviðið. Múttan er flugbeitt og meinfyndin glæpasaga sem bregður upp litríkri en nöturlegri mynd af ýmsum skúmaskotum fransks samfélags. Hannelore Cayre er rithöfundur, leikstjóri, handritshöfundur og refsiréttarlögmaður. Múttan er fimmta bók hennar og hlaut árið 2017 bæði hin virtu glæpasagnaverðlaun Grand Prix de littérature policière og Prix Le Point du polar européen. Hrafnhildur Guðmundsdóttir þýddi.
135 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 9, 2017
393 people are currently reading
5278 people want to read
About the author
Hannelore Cayre
14 books89 followersA criminal lawyer, she is also a film director and, above all, a writer.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 609 reviews
February 7, 2021
4.5 "mousse au chocolat noir avec merengue" stars !!!
2020 Honorable Mention Read
Thank you to Netgalley and ECW press for an e-book in exchange for my honest review. The English tranlation was released in September 2019. This book has won both European and French Crime Fiction Awards.
This is a short novel that packs a whole lot of punch. It is immensely clever and frothy like the best made merengue but wait underneath is the richest darkest chocolate mousse that is still light but in its depth is a whole lot of wickedness.
Madame Patience Portefeux is a police translator working long hours to keep her mother housed in an old age home that costs a fortune. Patience has seen both the best of times and the worst of times. She comes from a crime family, married well but was widowed. She was raised by an Arab slave as her mother, a holocaust survivor, shopped and dolled herself up. She is well educated and loves her daughters. She just happens to fall into the drug trade in her sixties.....
The author takes a very light touch in this book but underneath the antics, the quiet hilarity and a comedy of errors lies a very serious core. Modern France with all its inequities, racism and fears is laid bare as people con people in order to afford the luxuries which all feel entitled to. Love is not enough in this material world. Both men and women are corrupt, the state is decaying and hedonism at any cost is the order of the day.
This book was provocative, audacious and despite some very serious subject matter a great deal of very wicked fun.
2020 Honorable Mention Read
Thank you to Netgalley and ECW press for an e-book in exchange for my honest review. The English tranlation was released in September 2019. This book has won both European and French Crime Fiction Awards.
This is a short novel that packs a whole lot of punch. It is immensely clever and frothy like the best made merengue but wait underneath is the richest darkest chocolate mousse that is still light but in its depth is a whole lot of wickedness.
Madame Patience Portefeux is a police translator working long hours to keep her mother housed in an old age home that costs a fortune. Patience has seen both the best of times and the worst of times. She comes from a crime family, married well but was widowed. She was raised by an Arab slave as her mother, a holocaust survivor, shopped and dolled herself up. She is well educated and loves her daughters. She just happens to fall into the drug trade in her sixties.....
The author takes a very light touch in this book but underneath the antics, the quiet hilarity and a comedy of errors lies a very serious core. Modern France with all its inequities, racism and fears is laid bare as people con people in order to afford the luxuries which all feel entitled to. Love is not enough in this material world. Both men and women are corrupt, the state is decaying and hedonism at any cost is the order of the day.
This book was provocative, audacious and despite some very serious subject matter a great deal of very wicked fun.
December 7, 2019
Q:
My parents were crooks... They had lost everything... (c)
Q:
It seems that I am the last in the family line of adventurers. (c)
Q:
My endless summer had not begun at all how I had imagined it. (c)
The synaesthetic protagonist and all the other shebang are brilliant.
The situation with her elderly mother is patently horrible. Why we, as a society, fail our weakest citizens? We have nothing to offer the elderly, the weak, the disabled...
The family in question is very mindboggling. Along these lines: Educated. With lots of racial dysfunctionality and some pretty horrible ideas of childraising thrown in for good measure.
Philippe? I was really sorry to see this end that way.
I totally loved the good Godmother's rants about the broken meritocracy unflinchingly failing the academically brilliant. A common thing happening in many places.
Synasthesia:
Q:
I suffer from a slight neurological peculiarity. My brain conflates several of my senses, meaning I experience a different reality to other people. For me, colours and shapes are linked to taste and feelings of well-being or satiety. It’s a strange sensory experience, difficult to explain. The word is ineffable.
Some people see colours when they hear sounds, others associate numbers with shapes. Others again have a physical sense of time passing. My thing is that I taste and feel colours. It doesn’t make any difference that I know they’re just a quantum conversation between matter and light; I can’t help feeling that they form part of the very body of things. Where others see a pink dress, I see pink matter, composed of little pink atoms, and when I’m looking at it, I lose myself in its infinite pinkness. This gives rise to a sensation of both well-being and warmth, but also to an uncontrollable desire to bring the dress in question to my mouth, because for me, the colour pink is also a taste. (c)
Q:
Which brings me to fireworks… When those sprays of incandescent chrysanthemums appear in the sky, I experience a coloured emotion so profoundly vivid that I’m simultaneously saturated with joy and replete. Like an orgasm.
Collecting fireworks… It would feel like being at the centre of a gigantic gang bang with the entire universe. (c) What an imagery.
Other lovely stuff:
Q:
And so they bonded in their solitude, putting down roots in the no man’s land between a motorway and a forest, where they built the house in which I was raised, grandiosely named The Estate. (c)
Q:
To get a job with Mondiale you had to have first done time, because according to my father, only somebody who’d been locked up for at least 15 years could cope with being stuck in a truckie’s cab for thousands of miles, and would defend his cargo with his life. (c)
Q:
My father, on the rare occasions he was there, practised a form of vehicular terrorism... (c)
Q:
Whenever a friend asked where I lived, I lied. Nobody would have believed me anyway.
In my child’s mind, we were somehow different. We were the People of the Road. ...
We People of the Road were different. (c)
Q:
Money likes the shadows and there are shadows to spare along the edge of a motorway. As for the others, it was the road itself that drove them mad. (c)
Q:
It’s crazy how often blind drunk people would pile into a car only to die there, carrying away with them those happy families who’d set off on their holidays in the middle of the night so they could wake up at the seaside. (c)
Q:
‘A fireworks collector! But how are you planning to collect something like that?’
‘In my mind. I’m going to travel the world and see them all.’
‘Why, you’re the first fireworks collector I’ve ever met! Enchantée.’ (c)
Q:
For a long time, I couldn’t afford to be fresh and beautiful; now that I can, I’m catching up. (c)
Q:
It’s true that I’m easily annoyed, because I find people slow and often uninteresting. (c)
Q:
I personally became very familiar with that end-of-the-road ambiance, over numerous stays in improbable international hotels, both with him and with my own family. They were the only places where the air-conditioning worked and the alcohol was decent, where mercenaries rubbed shoulders with journalists, businessmen and criminals on the run, and the peaceful ennui in the bar lent itself to lazy chitchat. Not so different, for those in the know, to the cottonwool atmosphere of the common areas in psychiatric hospitals or in the spy novels of Gérard de Villiers. (c)
Q:
After such a precipitous collapse in my financial circumstances, I was always going to raise my daughters in hysterical fear of a drop in social status. I paid too much for their schools, screamed at them when they got bad marks, had a hole in their jeans or had greasy hair.
With their stellar academic records, my two genius daughters are now working in the services sector. I’ve never understood quite what their work entails; they’ve tried to explain a hundred times, but I tune out before I get it. Let’s just say we’re talking about those dumb-ass jobs where you fade away in front of some computer screen making things that don’t really exist and adding nothing of value to the world. Their careers are like the words in that song by Orelsan: No one’s gonna find fixed work / even with straight As and eight years’ study, you’re gonna have to fight / my pizza delivery guy knows how to fix a satellite! (c)
Q:
I would play imagine the house burns down and you rip off the insurance company...
I’ve always been open to positive ideas. I’ve never felt desperate enough to contemplate suicide; for that you need a spiritual strength I’ve just never had. (c)
Q:
The interpreter was simply a tool to accelerate the act of repression. (c)
Q:
It’s quite frightening when you think about it, that the translators and interpreters upon whom the security of the nation rests – those very people engaged in simultaneously interpreting the plots cooked up by Islamists in their cellars and garages – are working illegally, with no social security, no pension… Frankly, you could devise a better system, couldn’t you, in terms of incorruptibility. (c)
Q:
You should understand that a lot of French interpreters of North African origin only know their parents’ dialect, whereas there are seventeen different Arabic dialects that are as removed from each other as French is from German. It’s impossible to know all of them if you haven’t studied Arabic seriously at university level. So let’s say we’re talking about the intercepts of a Syrian or a Libyan, and they’ve been translated by, say, a Moroccan model, or a cop’s Tunisian wife, or a police superintendent’s Algerian personal trainer… How should I say this? I’m not judging, but I’d like to see them. (c)
Q:
Despite my disillusion, I made dazzling progress on the career front. My colleagues will say I must have slept with a lot of people. Or in the cruder version that made it back to me: there must have been kilometres of cops’ dicks involved, etc., etc. (c)
Q:
As for their capacity for introspection, they’re like business people the world over. Grossly lacking. (c)
Q:
Then, on finishing his studies he had come face to face with the Great French Lie. The educational meritocracy – opium of the people in a country where nobody is being hired anymore, least of all an Arab – would not be providing him with the means to finance his dreams. (c)
Q:
... since she expected absolutely nothing from life, none of her hopes had ever been dashed. (c)
Q:
As a young woman, her one hope had been that she wouldn’t be killed. Once a week, people from her camp were rounded up onto a train, and she would stand with her mother in a circle marked with the first letter of her last name, Z. By the time the guards made it to O, P, sometimes as far as U, there would be no more room in the carriages, and after a few hours waiting amidst the terrified screams, the families being torn apart and the summary executions, the two women would return to their barracks. Having survived that test, she had decided that the world could get along fine without her…
Throughout her life, she didn’t buy a single truly personal item; only clothes, perfume and make-up. (c)
Q:
Zero tolerance, zero thought – that about sums up the drug policy in this country, which is supposed to be governed by people who came top of their class. But fortunately, we have our terroir, the sacred, wine-producing soil of France. At least we’re allowed to be plastered from morning to night. Too bad for the Muslims, but then all they have to do is hit the booze like everybody else if they too want to work on their inner beauty. Q:
Q:
... it’s just that when you haven’t had anybody you could really chat to for twenty-five years, there’s no shortage of conversation topics. (c)
Q:
... I almost never go on holidays except while seated at my desk on the computer. (c)
Q:
... getting rid of a gun is the sort of job you never get around to doing... (c)
Q:
... when my parents went out to a restaurant, they could leave me alone between the motorway and the forest with the revolver on my bedside table... what baby-sitter could be as good as a .357 Magnum? (c) Yay.
Q:
Breathe, concentrate. As a child, I’d learned how to cross borders with an ‘unaccompanied minor’ sign around my neck, and my pink down puffer jacket stuffed full of five-hundred-franc notes. The secret is to submit control of every molecule in your body to your mind. (c) Quite some parenting!
Q:
The three of them looked at me as if they were hallucinating; the last thing they had expected was to have to do a deal with their mother. (c)
Q:
You always lower your eyes whenever anybody speaks to you, like you’re shy, but at the same time you’re giving off this feeling of kick-ass confidence – like the very worst scum bags in fact. (c)
Q:
... my nanny was a man, and he didn’t just babysit me, he raised me. (c)
Q:
First my father, then my husband, my mother and now other people’s parents: you had to wonder if I wasn’t somehow destined to clear people’s lives of their worldly possessions, one rubbish bag at a time. (c)
Q:
I was supposed to be overjoyed to be blowing some dough, some moolah, to borrow the language of the intellectuals currently populating my life… Yes… but buy what, do what? I was certain that not a single one of the young dealers whose conversations I had been translating for almost twenty-five years had had to cope with looking after a vomiting child, or one with braces, or with paying for school trips, or threading cords back through hoodies – or any of the small realities that threaten to drown women in the quicksand of motherhood. Life had run over me, like the iron I had used every evening so my children, despite the shortage of money, always wore impeccable clothes. I had become a bourgeois petite madame, my wings clipped by material preoccupations. And, contrary to what the ads would have us believe, it was not at all clear how you were supposed to alter your behaviour, once all those habits had become ingrained. (c)
Q:
I was at breakfast, pensively buttering my Weggli. These typically Swiss bread rolls bear a striking resemblance to a pair of buttocks, a fact that suddenly struck me as scandalously haram. What the hell were the Qatari management up to? (c)
Q:
What I needed wasn’t piles of cash to splash; nor was I interested in climbing the social ladder. No… I just wanted to rediscover a bit of the little fireworks collector’s innocence. I realised there wouldn’t be any endless summer as long as I was unable to rid myself of my anxiety about what tomorrow would bring, the anxiety I had lived with for so many years. (c)
Q:
... which absolutely removed any scruples – just in case one day I should acquire some... (c)
Q:
It was a typical 21st-century sigh. My daughters let out the same sort of sigh when they see the corpses of children washed up on beaches, forests burning, animals dying… (c)
Q:
Don’t you think there are worse things to worry about in the world than a handful of losers with diseased brains looking for their fifteen minutes of glory? Get over it already – all they’ve done is invent a new way of dying that’s as random as cancer or car accidents. (c)
Q:
... I was simply dealing with the morning’s events in my customary way, by adding said event to its place in my mental list of horrors. (c)
Q:
With my mother, I had truly thought I’d entered some sort of inner circle of Hell for the Elderly. (c)
My parents were crooks... They had lost everything... (c)
Q:
It seems that I am the last in the family line of adventurers. (c)
Q:
My endless summer had not begun at all how I had imagined it. (c)
The synaesthetic protagonist and all the other shebang are brilliant.
The situation with her elderly mother is patently horrible. Why we, as a society, fail our weakest citizens? We have nothing to offer the elderly, the weak, the disabled...
The family in question is very mindboggling. Along these lines: Educated. With lots of racial dysfunctionality and some pretty horrible ideas of childraising thrown in for good measure.
Philippe? I was really sorry to see this end that way.
I totally loved the good Godmother's rants about the broken meritocracy unflinchingly failing the academically brilliant. A common thing happening in many places.
Synasthesia:
Q:
I suffer from a slight neurological peculiarity. My brain conflates several of my senses, meaning I experience a different reality to other people. For me, colours and shapes are linked to taste and feelings of well-being or satiety. It’s a strange sensory experience, difficult to explain. The word is ineffable.
Some people see colours when they hear sounds, others associate numbers with shapes. Others again have a physical sense of time passing. My thing is that I taste and feel colours. It doesn’t make any difference that I know they’re just a quantum conversation between matter and light; I can’t help feeling that they form part of the very body of things. Where others see a pink dress, I see pink matter, composed of little pink atoms, and when I’m looking at it, I lose myself in its infinite pinkness. This gives rise to a sensation of both well-being and warmth, but also to an uncontrollable desire to bring the dress in question to my mouth, because for me, the colour pink is also a taste. (c)
Q:
Which brings me to fireworks… When those sprays of incandescent chrysanthemums appear in the sky, I experience a coloured emotion so profoundly vivid that I’m simultaneously saturated with joy and replete. Like an orgasm.
Collecting fireworks… It would feel like being at the centre of a gigantic gang bang with the entire universe. (c) What an imagery.
Other lovely stuff:
Q:
And so they bonded in their solitude, putting down roots in the no man’s land between a motorway and a forest, where they built the house in which I was raised, grandiosely named The Estate. (c)
Q:
To get a job with Mondiale you had to have first done time, because according to my father, only somebody who’d been locked up for at least 15 years could cope with being stuck in a truckie’s cab for thousands of miles, and would defend his cargo with his life. (c)
Q:
My father, on the rare occasions he was there, practised a form of vehicular terrorism... (c)
Q:
Whenever a friend asked where I lived, I lied. Nobody would have believed me anyway.
In my child’s mind, we were somehow different. We were the People of the Road. ...
We People of the Road were different. (c)
Q:
Money likes the shadows and there are shadows to spare along the edge of a motorway. As for the others, it was the road itself that drove them mad. (c)
Q:
It’s crazy how often blind drunk people would pile into a car only to die there, carrying away with them those happy families who’d set off on their holidays in the middle of the night so they could wake up at the seaside. (c)
Q:
‘A fireworks collector! But how are you planning to collect something like that?’
‘In my mind. I’m going to travel the world and see them all.’
‘Why, you’re the first fireworks collector I’ve ever met! Enchantée.’ (c)
Q:
For a long time, I couldn’t afford to be fresh and beautiful; now that I can, I’m catching up. (c)
Q:
It’s true that I’m easily annoyed, because I find people slow and often uninteresting. (c)
Q:
I personally became very familiar with that end-of-the-road ambiance, over numerous stays in improbable international hotels, both with him and with my own family. They were the only places where the air-conditioning worked and the alcohol was decent, where mercenaries rubbed shoulders with journalists, businessmen and criminals on the run, and the peaceful ennui in the bar lent itself to lazy chitchat. Not so different, for those in the know, to the cottonwool atmosphere of the common areas in psychiatric hospitals or in the spy novels of Gérard de Villiers. (c)
Q:
After such a precipitous collapse in my financial circumstances, I was always going to raise my daughters in hysterical fear of a drop in social status. I paid too much for their schools, screamed at them when they got bad marks, had a hole in their jeans or had greasy hair.
With their stellar academic records, my two genius daughters are now working in the services sector. I’ve never understood quite what their work entails; they’ve tried to explain a hundred times, but I tune out before I get it. Let’s just say we’re talking about those dumb-ass jobs where you fade away in front of some computer screen making things that don’t really exist and adding nothing of value to the world. Their careers are like the words in that song by Orelsan: No one’s gonna find fixed work / even with straight As and eight years’ study, you’re gonna have to fight / my pizza delivery guy knows how to fix a satellite! (c)
Q:
I would play imagine the house burns down and you rip off the insurance company...
I’ve always been open to positive ideas. I’ve never felt desperate enough to contemplate suicide; for that you need a spiritual strength I’ve just never had. (c)
Q:
The interpreter was simply a tool to accelerate the act of repression. (c)
Q:
It’s quite frightening when you think about it, that the translators and interpreters upon whom the security of the nation rests – those very people engaged in simultaneously interpreting the plots cooked up by Islamists in their cellars and garages – are working illegally, with no social security, no pension… Frankly, you could devise a better system, couldn’t you, in terms of incorruptibility. (c)
Q:
You should understand that a lot of French interpreters of North African origin only know their parents’ dialect, whereas there are seventeen different Arabic dialects that are as removed from each other as French is from German. It’s impossible to know all of them if you haven’t studied Arabic seriously at university level. So let’s say we’re talking about the intercepts of a Syrian or a Libyan, and they’ve been translated by, say, a Moroccan model, or a cop’s Tunisian wife, or a police superintendent’s Algerian personal trainer… How should I say this? I’m not judging, but I’d like to see them. (c)
Q:
Despite my disillusion, I made dazzling progress on the career front. My colleagues will say I must have slept with a lot of people. Or in the cruder version that made it back to me: there must have been kilometres of cops’ dicks involved, etc., etc. (c)
Q:
As for their capacity for introspection, they’re like business people the world over. Grossly lacking. (c)
Q:
Then, on finishing his studies he had come face to face with the Great French Lie. The educational meritocracy – opium of the people in a country where nobody is being hired anymore, least of all an Arab – would not be providing him with the means to finance his dreams. (c)
Q:
... since she expected absolutely nothing from life, none of her hopes had ever been dashed. (c)
Q:
As a young woman, her one hope had been that she wouldn’t be killed. Once a week, people from her camp were rounded up onto a train, and she would stand with her mother in a circle marked with the first letter of her last name, Z. By the time the guards made it to O, P, sometimes as far as U, there would be no more room in the carriages, and after a few hours waiting amidst the terrified screams, the families being torn apart and the summary executions, the two women would return to their barracks. Having survived that test, she had decided that the world could get along fine without her…
Throughout her life, she didn’t buy a single truly personal item; only clothes, perfume and make-up. (c)
Q:
Zero tolerance, zero thought – that about sums up the drug policy in this country, which is supposed to be governed by people who came top of their class. But fortunately, we have our terroir, the sacred, wine-producing soil of France. At least we’re allowed to be plastered from morning to night. Too bad for the Muslims, but then all they have to do is hit the booze like everybody else if they too want to work on their inner beauty. Q:
Q:
... it’s just that when you haven’t had anybody you could really chat to for twenty-five years, there’s no shortage of conversation topics. (c)
Q:
... I almost never go on holidays except while seated at my desk on the computer. (c)
Q:
... getting rid of a gun is the sort of job you never get around to doing... (c)
Q:
... when my parents went out to a restaurant, they could leave me alone between the motorway and the forest with the revolver on my bedside table... what baby-sitter could be as good as a .357 Magnum? (c) Yay.
Q:
Breathe, concentrate. As a child, I’d learned how to cross borders with an ‘unaccompanied minor’ sign around my neck, and my pink down puffer jacket stuffed full of five-hundred-franc notes. The secret is to submit control of every molecule in your body to your mind. (c) Quite some parenting!
Q:
The three of them looked at me as if they were hallucinating; the last thing they had expected was to have to do a deal with their mother. (c)
Q:
You always lower your eyes whenever anybody speaks to you, like you’re shy, but at the same time you’re giving off this feeling of kick-ass confidence – like the very worst scum bags in fact. (c)
Q:
... my nanny was a man, and he didn’t just babysit me, he raised me. (c)
Q:
First my father, then my husband, my mother and now other people’s parents: you had to wonder if I wasn’t somehow destined to clear people’s lives of their worldly possessions, one rubbish bag at a time. (c)
Q:
I was supposed to be overjoyed to be blowing some dough, some moolah, to borrow the language of the intellectuals currently populating my life… Yes… but buy what, do what? I was certain that not a single one of the young dealers whose conversations I had been translating for almost twenty-five years had had to cope with looking after a vomiting child, or one with braces, or with paying for school trips, or threading cords back through hoodies – or any of the small realities that threaten to drown women in the quicksand of motherhood. Life had run over me, like the iron I had used every evening so my children, despite the shortage of money, always wore impeccable clothes. I had become a bourgeois petite madame, my wings clipped by material preoccupations. And, contrary to what the ads would have us believe, it was not at all clear how you were supposed to alter your behaviour, once all those habits had become ingrained. (c)
Q:
I was at breakfast, pensively buttering my Weggli. These typically Swiss bread rolls bear a striking resemblance to a pair of buttocks, a fact that suddenly struck me as scandalously haram. What the hell were the Qatari management up to? (c)
Q:
What I needed wasn’t piles of cash to splash; nor was I interested in climbing the social ladder. No… I just wanted to rediscover a bit of the little fireworks collector’s innocence. I realised there wouldn’t be any endless summer as long as I was unable to rid myself of my anxiety about what tomorrow would bring, the anxiety I had lived with for so many years. (c)
Q:
... which absolutely removed any scruples – just in case one day I should acquire some... (c)
Q:
It was a typical 21st-century sigh. My daughters let out the same sort of sigh when they see the corpses of children washed up on beaches, forests burning, animals dying… (c)
Q:
Don’t you think there are worse things to worry about in the world than a handful of losers with diseased brains looking for their fifteen minutes of glory? Get over it already – all they’ve done is invent a new way of dying that’s as random as cancer or car accidents. (c)
Q:
... I was simply dealing with the morning’s events in my customary way, by adding said event to its place in my mental list of horrors. (c)
Q:
With my mother, I had truly thought I’d entered some sort of inner circle of Hell for the Elderly. (c)
September 5, 2019
I’m not sure where to begin or how to begin. Not my favorite book, but honesty compels me to give The Godmother at least four stars. Who knows, by the end of this review I might have changed my mind all over again. I am vacillating, which is something new to me. Maybe. Sometimes.
The life story of the widow Patience Portefeux is at times, amusing, other times poignant. Brought up in luxurious neglect for most of the year, Patience is the daughter of a Tunisian born Mafiosi and a camp survivor. She is widowed at an early age and left in genteel poverty with two daughters; she must work almost constantly to keep the genteel part of their poverty realistic.
.Patience has worked for 25 years as a Franco-Arab translator for the courts but her main source of income is from being the translator of the product from the wiretaps of various drug squads. She translates the diverse Arabic dialects into French. Patience’s boyfriend, the kind Philippe, is promoted to head one of the drug squads.
At 53, instead of looking forward to an easier life in retirement, Patience is reaching the stage of truly desperate because of school fees for her daughters and nursing home care for her mother.
One day, translating a wiretap intercept, Patience figures a way out of her almost hopeless dilemma. She is able to intervene in a massive drug deal and she ultimately becomes the mysterious Godmother. Patience is not greedy; she just wants her mother cared for and for her daughters to have a bit more security.
I will have to assume Stephanie Smee’s translation to be on point with Cayre’s writing stiletto sharp, shown in some cases by her skewering of certain aspects of French society while showing tenderness to other parts.
It was a bit difficult to disregard my life history in order to appreciate Patience as an admirable anti-hero. Especially with the damage Patience did to some people who did not deserve it, her attitude verging on callousness. On the other hand, at the end, Patience partially redeemed herself doing some severe damage to people who deserved it.
I was fascinated by Cayre’s honest takes on French society. We might be newly encouraging racism, but we are nowhere as bad as the French seem to be. This is not just from The Godmother. I’ve just read two books back- to- back about France and the rampant racism to be found. Cayre is also coldly apprising on other social issues including the treatment of immigrants, the elderly and employment laws.
The first person narrative is by turns droll, grimly self appraising, and sometimes psychopathic. Cayre is often devastating, writing about putting dogs down then in the next paragraphs about life in nursing homes. Oh yes, the two are strongly connected. Then again, I still can’t figure out Patience’s explanations on how to launder money. Not that I need to, but one can dream.
Okay okay, I’m sticking with four stars because of how well it was written. But if I were giving stars for morality only, I would only give it a 1. I'm having a hard time getting past her personal betrayals; her loving boyfriend and the police drug squads who employed her. If you don't like your job, quit, don't make fools out of people.
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.
The life story of the widow Patience Portefeux is at times, amusing, other times poignant. Brought up in luxurious neglect for most of the year, Patience is the daughter of a Tunisian born Mafiosi and a camp survivor. She is widowed at an early age and left in genteel poverty with two daughters; she must work almost constantly to keep the genteel part of their poverty realistic.
.Patience has worked for 25 years as a Franco-Arab translator for the courts but her main source of income is from being the translator of the product from the wiretaps of various drug squads. She translates the diverse Arabic dialects into French. Patience’s boyfriend, the kind Philippe, is promoted to head one of the drug squads.
At 53, instead of looking forward to an easier life in retirement, Patience is reaching the stage of truly desperate because of school fees for her daughters and nursing home care for her mother.
One day, translating a wiretap intercept, Patience figures a way out of her almost hopeless dilemma. She is able to intervene in a massive drug deal and she ultimately becomes the mysterious Godmother. Patience is not greedy; she just wants her mother cared for and for her daughters to have a bit more security.
I will have to assume Stephanie Smee’s translation to be on point with Cayre’s writing stiletto sharp, shown in some cases by her skewering of certain aspects of French society while showing tenderness to other parts.
It was a bit difficult to disregard my life history in order to appreciate Patience as an admirable anti-hero. Especially with the damage Patience did to some people who did not deserve it, her attitude verging on callousness. On the other hand, at the end, Patience partially redeemed herself doing some severe damage to people who deserved it.
I was fascinated by Cayre’s honest takes on French society. We might be newly encouraging racism, but we are nowhere as bad as the French seem to be. This is not just from The Godmother. I’ve just read two books back- to- back about France and the rampant racism to be found. Cayre is also coldly apprising on other social issues including the treatment of immigrants, the elderly and employment laws.
The first person narrative is by turns droll, grimly self appraising, and sometimes psychopathic. Cayre is often devastating, writing about putting dogs down then in the next paragraphs about life in nursing homes. Oh yes, the two are strongly connected. Then again, I still can’t figure out Patience’s explanations on how to launder money. Not that I need to, but one can dream.
Okay okay, I’m sticking with four stars because of how well it was written. But if I were giving stars for morality only, I would only give it a 1. I'm having a hard time getting past her personal betrayals; her loving boyfriend and the police drug squads who employed her. If you don't like your job, quit, don't make fools out of people.
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.
September 30, 2019
Lately I've been reading some wonderful slim novels in translation by women. And I'm loving them. This reminded me a bit of another gem I just read, Territory of Light. Only this is a crime novel. I don't read much in this genre, but the fact that it won France's most prestigious book crime prize drew me in. Plus the premise. The narrator herself is a translator of Jewish and Arab descent. Already you see the complexity.
Patience Portefeux (what a name!) translates Arabic communications from drug lords for the police. It's while she is on a call that inspiration occurs. I'll leave it at that so I don't spoil the plot.
What I loved about this novel was the author's ability to create a real, unvarnished, single, middle-aged woman with a fascinating background during a tumultuous time in politics and immigration reform. She makes you sympathize with some of the drug runners for their inability to be accepted into mainstream society and to get jobs, despite getting educated in France. She calls it the Great French Lie. It's a complex tale she weaves of interdependent criminal and police systems, but the most poignant scene she paints is in her mother's nursing home. Having just had a father in one, Cayre is dead on in her depiction of the reality these days of elderly parents who are forced to live beyond their time and often bankrupt the families who must watch out for them.
Patience is one of the most well-drawn characters I've read in a long time, and it's no wonder she will be brought to life as the lead in a film titled "Mama Weed."
More than that, she's captured something important about our current times in just 184 pages--The 21st century sigh. "My daughters let out the same sort of sigh when they see the corpses of children washed up on beaches, forests burning, animals dying..." The Godmother is one brief, long, beautiful ode to the 21st century sigh. MAMBO, Ms. Cayre.
Patience Portefeux (what a name!) translates Arabic communications from drug lords for the police. It's while she is on a call that inspiration occurs. I'll leave it at that so I don't spoil the plot.
What I loved about this novel was the author's ability to create a real, unvarnished, single, middle-aged woman with a fascinating background during a tumultuous time in politics and immigration reform. She makes you sympathize with some of the drug runners for their inability to be accepted into mainstream society and to get jobs, despite getting educated in France. She calls it the Great French Lie. It's a complex tale she weaves of interdependent criminal and police systems, but the most poignant scene she paints is in her mother's nursing home. Having just had a father in one, Cayre is dead on in her depiction of the reality these days of elderly parents who are forced to live beyond their time and often bankrupt the families who must watch out for them.
Patience is one of the most well-drawn characters I've read in a long time, and it's no wonder she will be brought to life as the lead in a film titled "Mama Weed."
More than that, she's captured something important about our current times in just 184 pages--The 21st century sigh. "My daughters let out the same sort of sigh when they see the corpses of children washed up on beaches, forests burning, animals dying..." The Godmother is one brief, long, beautiful ode to the 21st century sigh. MAMBO, Ms. Cayre.
October 19, 2020
I picked this book up because a GR reviewer gave it 5 stars, and I was intrigued. I was not aware this was “crime fiction”. I guess it’s not my ‘thing’. I can appreciate that those who are into this genre of fiction would like this novel. I can give it 2.5 stars which will give it a 3 for the GR system. I don’t feel it should be panned by me. For crime fiction, what little I have read of it, it seems to be good. This book was made into a movie — it just came out last month (September 2020) and it stars Isabelle Huppert (I could swear that I’ve seen her before in a movie but I don’t remember it)……there are no reviews of the movie as yet on Rotten Tomatoes.
This book was a winner of the European Crime Fiction prize and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.
The author is a practicing criminal lawyer (in the novel the main protagonist, Patience Portefeux, is a Franco-Arab translator for the France Ministry of Justice who ends up dealing 1200 kilos of high-quality cannabis…on the sly I should hasten to add).
Reviews:
• https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/bo...
• https://www.readings.com.au/review/th...#
• https://crimefictionlover.com/2019/10...
• https://nbmagazine.co.uk/the-godmothe...
These are all good reviews of the book which confirms my suspicion that me reviewing this book is like a vegetarian reviewing a steakhouse restaurant. 🙃
This book was a winner of the European Crime Fiction prize and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.
The author is a practicing criminal lawyer (in the novel the main protagonist, Patience Portefeux, is a Franco-Arab translator for the France Ministry of Justice who ends up dealing 1200 kilos of high-quality cannabis…on the sly I should hasten to add).
Reviews:
• https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/bo...
• https://www.readings.com.au/review/th...#
• https://crimefictionlover.com/2019/10...
• https://nbmagazine.co.uk/the-godmothe...
These are all good reviews of the book which confirms my suspicion that me reviewing this book is like a vegetarian reviewing a steakhouse restaurant. 🙃
February 4, 2024
2,5 O lectură plăcuta. Mi s-a părut o glumă, un mod de a lua în râs viața și greutățile, de a profita de moment.
March 18, 2020
3.5 stars
Now this was a lovely surprise.
Widow Patience is not necessarily portrayed as a likable character, and honestly, she prefers it that way. Her children are not overly fond of her and her ailing mother is almost more than Patience can handle, emotionally and financially.
Because of Patience work as a translator for the courts she is in an ideal position to listen in on the most intimate conversations between targeted drug suspects. And just by “accident” she becomes the new owner of 1.2 tons of hash……..What to do?
There are 2 stories really, the first is her struggles to deal with an ailing parent. I think this part was portrayed very well. The 2nd story is the fun part, her stumbling into the drug trade of Paris. But I feel that this section could have been fleshed out a lot as there was so much more to tell.
I have been going back and forth with my rating but have now finally settled on 4 stars. The plot is unusual enough to be memorable, the storyline does not drag, in fact I wanted this to be much longer, and the hints of humor (if on the dark side) made this well worth the read.
Recommended
Now this was a lovely surprise.
Widow Patience is not necessarily portrayed as a likable character, and honestly, she prefers it that way. Her children are not overly fond of her and her ailing mother is almost more than Patience can handle, emotionally and financially.
Because of Patience work as a translator for the courts she is in an ideal position to listen in on the most intimate conversations between targeted drug suspects. And just by “accident” she becomes the new owner of 1.2 tons of hash……..What to do?
There are 2 stories really, the first is her struggles to deal with an ailing parent. I think this part was portrayed very well. The 2nd story is the fun part, her stumbling into the drug trade of Paris. But I feel that this section could have been fleshed out a lot as there was so much more to tell.
I have been going back and forth with my rating but have now finally settled on 4 stars. The plot is unusual enough to be memorable, the storyline does not drag, in fact I wanted this to be much longer, and the hints of humor (if on the dark side) made this well worth the read.
Recommended
October 4, 2020
Whip smart book!
Truly, I have not come across such in quite some time. Years. Of course numbers of books holding heartfelt endearments or more kindness, oodles of pure wit or cleverness? Yes, some of those I have met may have been more erudite or melding for plot to characters. But not a one was this whip smart. And whip smart in this length and directness is an IDEAL read.
Brisk, clenched, dialect of one word which clinches more than 10 sentences. Just superb. "talk doesn't make rice"- I am all in on Mrs. Fo also.
I do not at all doubt I will read all of hers which become translated. This is a director for film as well as a writer. Oh, you can tell. This will make a fabulous film. Especially for all the different Paris or sublime hotel settings.
This is kernals of character, core of individual in every apt manner or belief told without the 10 paragraph an opinion method that you get in most moderns.
Myself, I probably did not catch more than 1/2 of the French, Arabic, Jewish sublimities. But the ones I did were mighty.
The Godmother taught me more about French Law and real estate than non-fiction ever did.
If you have ever had a difficult or dying parent in nursing care facility for length- do NOT miss this book.
The Godmother is the kind of character of age and wisdom I have always appreciated. Despite her non-belief in God, she still makes an incredible argument.
HIGHLY recommend. For most other readers it will be more probably a 4 star, IMHO. Not me. I don't feel sorry for Phillippe at all. And I can "see the girl, her Sundae and Audrey Hepburn" in photo as if it were sitting on my lap.
Truly, I have not come across such in quite some time. Years. Of course numbers of books holding heartfelt endearments or more kindness, oodles of pure wit or cleverness? Yes, some of those I have met may have been more erudite or melding for plot to characters. But not a one was this whip smart. And whip smart in this length and directness is an IDEAL read.
Brisk, clenched, dialect of one word which clinches more than 10 sentences. Just superb. "talk doesn't make rice"- I am all in on Mrs. Fo also.
I do not at all doubt I will read all of hers which become translated. This is a director for film as well as a writer. Oh, you can tell. This will make a fabulous film. Especially for all the different Paris or sublime hotel settings.
This is kernals of character, core of individual in every apt manner or belief told without the 10 paragraph an opinion method that you get in most moderns.
Myself, I probably did not catch more than 1/2 of the French, Arabic, Jewish sublimities. But the ones I did were mighty.
The Godmother taught me more about French Law and real estate than non-fiction ever did.
If you have ever had a difficult or dying parent in nursing care facility for length- do NOT miss this book.
The Godmother is the kind of character of age and wisdom I have always appreciated. Despite her non-belief in God, she still makes an incredible argument.
HIGHLY recommend. For most other readers it will be more probably a 4 star, IMHO. Not me. I don't feel sorry for Phillippe at all. And I can "see the girl, her Sundae and Audrey Hepburn" in photo as if it were sitting on my lap.
January 29, 2020
I'm not sure whether this is a crime story or a story of the drug trade in Paris. Either way it's a good sharp and succinct story with a difference.
Patience Portefeux, fifty-three, an underpaid French-Arabic translator has run out of patience. She grew up with a criminal father who lost her family's wealth and died suddenly. Her husband, her one true love also died suddenly leaving her to deal with two children, a dying mother in a nursing home and no pension. An opportunity arises for Patience to utilise both her translating skills and her inherited criminal genes to obtain the cash and assets to retire on.
Patience is a cool customer with little regard to French institutions and all the hypocrisies, drug dealers and their stupidity and the French middle class and their disinterest in what is happening in their country. Patience is not one waiting for the meek to inherit the world.
Patience Portefeux, fifty-three, an underpaid French-Arabic translator has run out of patience. She grew up with a criminal father who lost her family's wealth and died suddenly. Her husband, her one true love also died suddenly leaving her to deal with two children, a dying mother in a nursing home and no pension. An opportunity arises for Patience to utilise both her translating skills and her inherited criminal genes to obtain the cash and assets to retire on.
Patience is a cool customer with little regard to French institutions and all the hypocrisies, drug dealers and their stupidity and the French middle class and their disinterest in what is happening in their country. Patience is not one waiting for the meek to inherit the world.
October 15, 2019
An unusual book, which I’m ultimately ambivalent about. I loved that Patience took decisive action to alter her life’s circumstance. Yay. (Sure, it was illegal, but the poor woman was desperate.) The scenes and desperation regarding aged care rung very true, and so too the racism experienced by many communities. But there were some really odd bits - a boyfriend who just appeared three-quarters through without being mentioned earlier, lack of soul-searching about the impacts of her actions (a few dead bodies along the way) and a rushed ending. Fundamentally I think it’s mislabelled as “crime fiction”: it’s a drama about a desperate woman who commits an opportunistic crime. It has some good bits, it’s beautifully translated, but the story has some average bits. Ultimately a mixed bag, just like life itself.
April 17, 2020
A drug trafficking matriarch is the mafiosa style anti-heroine of this surreal black comedy. The sardonic narration in the distinctive voice of the protagonist is mixed with snappy street-wise dialogue and acerbic social commentary on the institutionalised racism and exclusion in the Parisian banlieues. It's an offbeat and seductive portrayal of a nihilistic skewed morality which will have you checking your own moral compass. If you liked the TV series Spiral, you may enjoy a different take from the opposite side of the French criminal underworld.
Reviewed for Whichbook.net
Reviewed for Whichbook.net
February 10, 2020
The Godmother is such a dark quirky tale.
Wonderful gritty translated fiction by this French author with a background in criminal law.
This edition is translated by Stephanie Smee who also has a law background. She's been awarded the 2019 JQ Wingate Prize for No Place to Lay One's Head by Francoise Frenkel, so I might put that one on my reading list too.
Wonderful gritty translated fiction by this French author with a background in criminal law.
This edition is translated by Stephanie Smee who also has a law background. She's been awarded the 2019 JQ Wingate Prize for No Place to Lay One's Head by Francoise Frenkel, so I might put that one on my reading list too.
July 5, 2020
Such a good little crime novel and so well translated. I loved this.
July 26, 2019
Review: The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre, translated by Stephanie Smee
I wish to thank ECW Press and NetGalley for this advanced reader’s copy in return for my honest review.
I was interested in reading this book based on the description on the NetGalley site. I had high hopes. I was disappointed. The underlying story for The Godmother is a good one. The author took too long getting to this story. In fact, it took about 25% of the book before I was engaged at all. I was about to give up when the story finally began to evolve. It took over 50% of the book before the title had meaning. This is too slow of a start for me. Again...the underlying story kept me reading in hopes that the book would pick up and improve. It never really did. Once the story kicked in, it seemed that the author veered off the path into the weeds providing background that slowed the pace of the story. Although this background was necessary, it just seemed misplaced. Crawling out of these weeds took too long getting back to the main story. Maybe the main story was not fleshed out enough and this background was used to fill in the story.
On a positive note, I did like Patience Portefeux (the main character and Godmother). She felt like a real person with real problems. I could understand her frustrations and choices. She had a sense of humor that I related to and enjoyed.
Being a bit generous, my star rating for this book is 3 stars.
I wish to thank ECW Press and NetGalley for this advanced reader’s copy in return for my honest review.
I was interested in reading this book based on the description on the NetGalley site. I had high hopes. I was disappointed. The underlying story for The Godmother is a good one. The author took too long getting to this story. In fact, it took about 25% of the book before I was engaged at all. I was about to give up when the story finally began to evolve. It took over 50% of the book before the title had meaning. This is too slow of a start for me. Again...the underlying story kept me reading in hopes that the book would pick up and improve. It never really did. Once the story kicked in, it seemed that the author veered off the path into the weeds providing background that slowed the pace of the story. Although this background was necessary, it just seemed misplaced. Crawling out of these weeds took too long getting back to the main story. Maybe the main story was not fleshed out enough and this background was used to fill in the story.
On a positive note, I did like Patience Portefeux (the main character and Godmother). She felt like a real person with real problems. I could understand her frustrations and choices. She had a sense of humor that I related to and enjoyed.
Being a bit generous, my star rating for this book is 3 stars.
January 18, 2021
Mixed feelings here. This is the story of a French-Arabic woman in her 50s, who is paid a pittance for translating police phone-taps. She becomes widowed at a young age and has to bring up two daughters as well as looking after her mother, whom she does not seem to have any affection for. Eventually, at the age of 53, she becomes a key player in the criminal underworld: The Godmother. The story, short though it is, is full of legal detail as the author is a criminal lawyer and screenwriter.
On the positive side the story is well written and full of black humour. It becomes quite farcical towards the end - I think this will work well on screen (film is being made). It also highlights poverty, racism, ageing and being treated as a lesser being. However, I just did not gel with the characters, or feel I knew much about them. The idea was great, the writing good - but it missed something - a bit like a plan that had not been fully developed.
On the positive side the story is well written and full of black humour. It becomes quite farcical towards the end - I think this will work well on screen (film is being made). It also highlights poverty, racism, ageing and being treated as a lesser being. However, I just did not gel with the characters, or feel I knew much about them. The idea was great, the writing good - but it missed something - a bit like a plan that had not been fully developed.
November 25, 2020
The Godmother is a slim crime novel (184 pages) that packs a punch. It won France's most prestigious crime book prize and is to be a major motion picture. Patience Portefeux, 53, had a tumultuous childhood, is a longtime widow, the mother of two daughters, and caring for her aging mother in a rest home, which costs a fortune, and may very well bankrupt her soon. French and Arabic-speaking, she is a courtroom interpreter and transcribes phone-tapped conversations where drug dealers are speaking Arabic. Contemporary France here is not the city of lights and wine in cafes, but one where outsiders, even if educated in France, can't find jobs. It is a France of political upheaval, rife with immigration issues, and it's not hard to sympathize with the drug dealers. She's a wonderful, acerbic, smart character, finely developed, and when she hears something on one of the wire taps, well...
December 9, 2019
A strange story but quite enjoyable. Patience works as an Arabic translator for the Drug Police in Paris. She is broke and has a mother in an elderly care facility. She realizes she is getting old and has no savings so she takes advantage of her job to make money. The story is loaded with dark humor and some clever dialogue which at times can get a little confusing (maybe the translation?). I also liked the social commentary by the author regarding the life of the Arab immigrants in France and the treatment they receive from the justice system and society as a whole. There is also some clever discussion on the conditions of the elderly care. A really rewarding book.
September 17, 2019
Mmm. I always love a bitter narrator. It's hard not to see Isabelle Huppert as the Godmother here.
November 18, 2021
রোমাঞ্চ-গল্পের আড়ালে মানুষ, রাষ্ট্র আর সময়ের গল্প। আধুনিক ইউরোপ নিয়ে কিছু কিছু পর্যবেক্ষণ চমকে দেয়ার মতো সুন্দর।
চমৎকার শব্দচয়ন, সেটা লেখকের না অনুবাদকের কৃতিত্ব বোঝা যাচ্ছে না।
চমৎকার শব্দচয়ন, সেটা লেখকের না অনুবাদকের কৃতিত্ব বোঝা যাচ্ছে না।
October 30, 2019
“It took me a week to spot her [a nursing aide] because in old people’s houses, it’s like in hospitals and creches: almost all the employees working there are Blacks or Arabs. Racists of all sides, you’d better know that the first and the last person who will feed you with a spoon and wash your private parts is a woman you despise!”
This is the voice of Patience Portefeux, a 50 year old French woman of Tunisian/Viennese Jewish parents. The above excerpt relates to her mother who is now demented and living in a nursing home. Patience was widowed while young and has spent the ensuing years struggling to cover the living expenses of her daughters and herself, and now has the added impost of nursing home fees. It’s a problem familiar to many of us – care for ailing parents, aged care homes and/or financial security. In Australia - “Women aged over 50 are the fastest growing group of people at risk of homelessness in this lucky country, with a 30 per cent rise in the number of grandmothers, mothers, aunts and sisters sleeping in their cars, couch surfing or accessing crisis accommodation since 2011.” (https://probonoaustralia.com.au/news/...)
Patience can speak Arabic – and therefore has a job as a translator for elements of the legal system in Paris. The job is poorly paid but she doesn’t have many options. Her main role is to translate the taped conversations of drug dealers for the police. One day, she realizes that she knows a relative of one of the dealers – and this propels her life in quite another direction.
It’s a side of Paris that you rarely see in popular culture – the underbelly of drug dealing. Massive amounts of drugs like hash are being trucked in from countries like Morocco. While the novel doesn’t spend a lot of time on this, the disaffection of young men of Arabic/middle eastern backgrounds forms part of the reason for their part in the trafficking. Cayre does a good job of pointing to the inequities and unmet expectations of this section of French society. Forever outsiders. I quite enjoyed the story line. The novel has been very successful, being awarded the European Crime Fiction Prize, the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, and it has been made into a film starring Isabelle Huppert. I think this reviewers phrase captures it entirely: “this striking little oddity” of a novel (translated by an Australian woman).
This is the voice of Patience Portefeux, a 50 year old French woman of Tunisian/Viennese Jewish parents. The above excerpt relates to her mother who is now demented and living in a nursing home. Patience was widowed while young and has spent the ensuing years struggling to cover the living expenses of her daughters and herself, and now has the added impost of nursing home fees. It’s a problem familiar to many of us – care for ailing parents, aged care homes and/or financial security. In Australia - “Women aged over 50 are the fastest growing group of people at risk of homelessness in this lucky country, with a 30 per cent rise in the number of grandmothers, mothers, aunts and sisters sleeping in their cars, couch surfing or accessing crisis accommodation since 2011.” (https://probonoaustralia.com.au/news/...)
Patience can speak Arabic – and therefore has a job as a translator for elements of the legal system in Paris. The job is poorly paid but she doesn’t have many options. Her main role is to translate the taped conversations of drug dealers for the police. One day, she realizes that she knows a relative of one of the dealers – and this propels her life in quite another direction.
It’s a side of Paris that you rarely see in popular culture – the underbelly of drug dealing. Massive amounts of drugs like hash are being trucked in from countries like Morocco. While the novel doesn’t spend a lot of time on this, the disaffection of young men of Arabic/middle eastern backgrounds forms part of the reason for their part in the trafficking. Cayre does a good job of pointing to the inequities and unmet expectations of this section of French society. Forever outsiders. I quite enjoyed the story line. The novel has been very successful, being awarded the European Crime Fiction Prize, the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, and it has been made into a film starring Isabelle Huppert. I think this reviewers phrase captures it entirely: “this striking little oddity” of a novel (translated by an Australian woman).
February 16, 2020
If you're looking for a short book that packs a lot in, you've found it. At less than 200 pages, The Godmother has a lot to offer.
At the centre of the story is Patience Portefeux, a single woman with two grown daughters, who earns her living translating police surveillance audio from Arabic to French. Her mother is in care, suffering from dementia. All she wants is to leave her daughters something and to make her own life a bit better. And if in the meantime, she can improve the life of some others - she'll do that too!
I loved Patience's practical nature. She sees an opportunity and takes it. She is smart and in complete control. She knows what she wants and she goes for it with a strength and single mindedness that female characters, especially older female characters, are very rarely allowed to have.
The Godmother will make you laugh while at the same time filling you with a wide variety of emotions. At all times you are cheering for Patience. At no time did I not want her to succeed. I loved that she had clear goals, didn't get greedy and made it about more than just her. Such a fabulous read.
At the centre of the story is Patience Portefeux, a single woman with two grown daughters, who earns her living translating police surveillance audio from Arabic to French. Her mother is in care, suffering from dementia. All she wants is to leave her daughters something and to make her own life a bit better. And if in the meantime, she can improve the life of some others - she'll do that too!
I loved Patience's practical nature. She sees an opportunity and takes it. She is smart and in complete control. She knows what she wants and she goes for it with a strength and single mindedness that female characters, especially older female characters, are very rarely allowed to have.
The Godmother will make you laugh while at the same time filling you with a wide variety of emotions. At all times you are cheering for Patience. At no time did I not want her to succeed. I loved that she had clear goals, didn't get greedy and made it about more than just her. Such a fabulous read.
May 1, 2020
With less than 200 pages I really should have finished this book a lot faster than I did, but in all honesty, I just wasn’t engaged and it felt like a chore.
Started off ok and I enjoyed the intrigue of the protagonist, but then it just all went a bit bleh for me and it hurt my head.
I guess I just wasn’t that into it. 2 stars.
Started off ok and I enjoyed the intrigue of the protagonist, but then it just all went a bit bleh for me and it hurt my head.
I guess I just wasn’t that into it. 2 stars.
February 27, 2020
A delight. A French-Arabic translator uses her drudgery filled work to go rogue and make some much needed cash. Exudes a type of whimsical nihilism that the French do so effortlessly well. Fresh, smart and funny.
August 29, 2020
Fun, fast read!
Recommended by Melissa on the Strong Sense of Place podcast.
Recommended by Melissa on the Strong Sense of Place podcast.
November 10, 2021
Very rarely it happens that you come across a narrative voice so unique, so utterly sui generis that you want to do nothing else but keep listening in for the pure sensual pleasure of it. Narration so distinctive is its own kind of decadence. Norman Rush's anthropologist heroine in Mating was one such: whip-smart, all-out ballsy, take-no-prisoners compelling.
Hannelore Cayre's extraordinary creation Patience Portefeux is every bit as unique, completely her own unrepeatable self, with almost no antecedent in fiction that I could think of. A police translator fluent in Arabic, a widowed mother of two, a Franco-Jewish woman with a past for which the adjective "checkered" does very poor justice, daughter of a Tunisian pied-noir criminal type and an Austrian Jewish survivor of the camps, raised by a khemmessat slave in a suburban estate bordered on one side by a concrete motorway and on the other by the hunting forests of the French president, current resident of of Belleville in an apartment block packed with migrant Chinese and owned by the inscrutable Madame Fo - by the time she comes into the possession of a ton of Moroccan hash, you are all set up for the ride of your reading life. That the subsequent drug plot and its resolution is perhaps the weakest part of the book does nothing to distract - in my view - from its outstanding merits, which is to deliver the blackest, most cynical judgment of 21st century metropolitan Paris and its diverse (in all senses of the word) problems.
They say that a good work of noir acts as an X-ray of its society, and The Godmother is certainly that, looking at the violent fissures of the modern French nation with a grim and unforgiving eye. Anyone who has spent a bit of time there can see the hyper-diversity of the capital's banlieues, but you need to spend a lot more time on the inside to understand the seemingly insoluble problems of marginalisation, migrant poverty and criminalisation. Cayre, with her privileged position within the criminal justice system, exploits her first-hand knowledge to the fullest to paint a portrait that is never less than gripping for all its grimness. You could even call her dealings with Scotch and his assorted band of Maghrebi lowlifes entertaining. But for me, that pales utterly in comparison to the sociological exposition of pied-noir culture that she nails down in this book; whole libraries of academic tomes couldn't distill its toxic-romantic essence the way Cayre does here in just a few pages. The bling-bling style of the Parisian bled, the brutal horrors of aging in an underfunded system, the fun and danger inherent in a hyper-integrated and hyper-mobile Europe, the hustle and fierce determination of the quiet, unobtrusive Chinese diaspora - all this wealth of anthropological detail was what kept me hooked for the duration. The plot, I could take it or leave it, but I would certainly have no objection to another round of La Daronne's basilisk view of the world.
The movie featuring Isabelle Huppert looks fucking interesting too.
PS Big ups to translator Steph Smee for her immaculate work with the vernacular.
Hannelore Cayre's extraordinary creation Patience Portefeux is every bit as unique, completely her own unrepeatable self, with almost no antecedent in fiction that I could think of. A police translator fluent in Arabic, a widowed mother of two, a Franco-Jewish woman with a past for which the adjective "checkered" does very poor justice, daughter of a Tunisian pied-noir criminal type and an Austrian Jewish survivor of the camps, raised by a khemmessat slave in a suburban estate bordered on one side by a concrete motorway and on the other by the hunting forests of the French president, current resident of of Belleville in an apartment block packed with migrant Chinese and owned by the inscrutable Madame Fo - by the time she comes into the possession of a ton of Moroccan hash, you are all set up for the ride of your reading life. That the subsequent drug plot and its resolution is perhaps the weakest part of the book does nothing to distract - in my view - from its outstanding merits, which is to deliver the blackest, most cynical judgment of 21st century metropolitan Paris and its diverse (in all senses of the word) problems.
They say that a good work of noir acts as an X-ray of its society, and The Godmother is certainly that, looking at the violent fissures of the modern French nation with a grim and unforgiving eye. Anyone who has spent a bit of time there can see the hyper-diversity of the capital's banlieues, but you need to spend a lot more time on the inside to understand the seemingly insoluble problems of marginalisation, migrant poverty and criminalisation. Cayre, with her privileged position within the criminal justice system, exploits her first-hand knowledge to the fullest to paint a portrait that is never less than gripping for all its grimness. You could even call her dealings with Scotch and his assorted band of Maghrebi lowlifes entertaining. But for me, that pales utterly in comparison to the sociological exposition of pied-noir culture that she nails down in this book; whole libraries of academic tomes couldn't distill its toxic-romantic essence the way Cayre does here in just a few pages. The bling-bling style of the Parisian bled, the brutal horrors of aging in an underfunded system, the fun and danger inherent in a hyper-integrated and hyper-mobile Europe, the hustle and fierce determination of the quiet, unobtrusive Chinese diaspora - all this wealth of anthropological detail was what kept me hooked for the duration. The plot, I could take it or leave it, but I would certainly have no objection to another round of La Daronne's basilisk view of the world.
The movie featuring Isabelle Huppert looks fucking interesting too.
PS Big ups to translator Steph Smee for her immaculate work with the vernacular.
February 2, 2023
Translated from French this is a pretty quirky and entertaining read and as a sometimes French reader believe this English version hasn't lost much of the French nuances and humour.
The opening has Patience giving the low down on her rather bizarre parents of the 70's. Her mother is Jewish who escaped from being sent to a concentration camp during the war and her father from French Tunisia, Patience calls them "wogs". They live in a house situated alongside a major highway for whom all the inhabitants are labelled "people of the road". The descriptions of the inhabitants are wonderfully colourful and for some it may bring back memories of such people that hid themselves in plain sight alongside a major arterial highway and those passing by commenting "why?". The descriptions of how her parents manoeuvred their vehicles from the following traffic are also very humorous.
Still it seems Patience was a great disappointment to her parents being a girl, particularly her mother who lets fly with some terrible insults, when she is a child. The parents live for money and are crooks importing through her father's position as Manager of a trucking coy all sorts of illegal weapons and drugs. He only employed drivers who had been locked up for many years as they could well cope being in a trucking cab for thousands of miles and defend their cargo with their lives. The trucks head off for any country ending with "an", Pakistan, Uzbekistan etc.
Patience is a linguist specialising in Arabic and has a position with the French police as a translator mostly for their phone taps of drug traffickers. Financially she is stretched, she is a widow with two daughters who unlike her, as a daughter, were spoiled by their grandmother. Her mother is now in a nursing home for which Patience is paying for and is bed ridden but even with her deteriorating mind still manages to upset Patience who spends her nights there trying to coax food into her. During an episode at the nursing home she becomes aware through one of her phone taps that the episode is being talked about by one of the nurses from the nursing home. Curiosity makes her look for this nurse and changing her visiting hours begins a friendship with her who in turn shows her how to manage her mother. Each day Patience listens to the phone tap between this nurse and her son. The police are onto a huge drug shipment soon to come in for which Patience becomes aware of the details. Now a friend of the nurse she manages to warn her. The shipment being trucked, police tracking the truck for which all of a sudden disappears out of sight. The police have nothing, can't find the dropped drugs. Patience becomes aware of certain drug detection dogs who are being retired, in a lightbulb moment decides to adopt one. Adding to her curiosity she decides to do a highway search with the dog in tow, Googling likely hiding places, she eventually comes across the heist. With shopping bags in tow and several trips she eventually has the drugs hidden in the basement of her building. From here on the fun begins, toting an old gun of her father's, she's in the business.
The opening has Patience giving the low down on her rather bizarre parents of the 70's. Her mother is Jewish who escaped from being sent to a concentration camp during the war and her father from French Tunisia, Patience calls them "wogs". They live in a house situated alongside a major highway for whom all the inhabitants are labelled "people of the road". The descriptions of the inhabitants are wonderfully colourful and for some it may bring back memories of such people that hid themselves in plain sight alongside a major arterial highway and those passing by commenting "why?". The descriptions of how her parents manoeuvred their vehicles from the following traffic are also very humorous.
Still it seems Patience was a great disappointment to her parents being a girl, particularly her mother who lets fly with some terrible insults, when she is a child. The parents live for money and are crooks importing through her father's position as Manager of a trucking coy all sorts of illegal weapons and drugs. He only employed drivers who had been locked up for many years as they could well cope being in a trucking cab for thousands of miles and defend their cargo with their lives. The trucks head off for any country ending with "an", Pakistan, Uzbekistan etc.
Patience is a linguist specialising in Arabic and has a position with the French police as a translator mostly for their phone taps of drug traffickers. Financially she is stretched, she is a widow with two daughters who unlike her, as a daughter, were spoiled by their grandmother. Her mother is now in a nursing home for which Patience is paying for and is bed ridden but even with her deteriorating mind still manages to upset Patience who spends her nights there trying to coax food into her. During an episode at the nursing home she becomes aware through one of her phone taps that the episode is being talked about by one of the nurses from the nursing home. Curiosity makes her look for this nurse and changing her visiting hours begins a friendship with her who in turn shows her how to manage her mother. Each day Patience listens to the phone tap between this nurse and her son. The police are onto a huge drug shipment soon to come in for which Patience becomes aware of the details. Now a friend of the nurse she manages to warn her. The shipment being trucked, police tracking the truck for which all of a sudden disappears out of sight. The police have nothing, can't find the dropped drugs. Patience becomes aware of certain drug detection dogs who are being retired, in a lightbulb moment decides to adopt one. Adding to her curiosity she decides to do a highway search with the dog in tow, Googling likely hiding places, she eventually comes across the heist. With shopping bags in tow and several trips she eventually has the drugs hidden in the basement of her building. From here on the fun begins, toting an old gun of her father's, she's in the business.
March 24, 2021
I discovered 'The Godmother' by Hannelore Cayre recently and just finished reading it.
The narrator of the story, Patience, is a 50-year old woman. She starts the story by telling us about her parents and her childhood, about the good things and the bad things that happened in her life, and how she reached the present stage she is in. She is working as an translator for the police department now, especially translating wiretaps of drug smugglers from Arabic to English. One day she uses what she hears in the wiretap to do something. Whether what she does is good or bad, I won't tell you. Things snowball beyond that, the action explodes and what happens after that is told in the rest of the story.
The thing I loved the most about the story was the narrator's voice. It is cool, charming, irreverent, doesn't beat around the bush, calls a spade a spade. From the first passage –
"My parents were crooks, with a visceral love of money. For them it wasn’t an inert substance stashed away in a suitcase or held in some account. No. They loved it as a living, intelligent being that could create and destroy, possessing the gift of reproduction. Something mighty that forged destinies, that separated beauty from ugliness, winners from losers. Money was Everything; the distillation of all that could be bought in a world where everything was for sale. It was the answer to every question. It was the pre-Babel language that united mankind."
– Patience's voice grabs our attention and never lets go. Patience is such an awesome narrator.
The story is very gripping too. I read most of the book on one day. We can call this noir fiction and it is up there with the best. French crime fiction is soaring high these days and this is a shining example of that. Another thing I loved about the book is that there are really no bad characters. Or rather the story depicts people as imperfect with flaws and so we see people as they really are – there are no simplistic black-and-white depictions here. I loved that aspect of the book. I loved most of the characters in the book, especially the nurse Khadija who takes care of Patience's mom, Khadija's son Afid, Philippe the police officer who is in love with Patience, Bouchta Patience's nanny when she was a kid, Madame Lò Patience's neighbour, and DNA, Patience's dog. They are all fascinating characters.
I don't know whether the story is pure imagination or is inspired by real events. The author is a practising criminal lawyer and she has thanked translators who work in the court. If the story is inspired by real events, then the book is a scathing commentary on some aspects of life in today's France.
I loved 'The Godmother'. I discovered that it has been made into a movie with Isabelle Huppert in the lead role. I can't wait to watch that. I want to read more books by Hannelore Cayre now.
Have you read 'The Godmother'? What do you think about it?
The narrator of the story, Patience, is a 50-year old woman. She starts the story by telling us about her parents and her childhood, about the good things and the bad things that happened in her life, and how she reached the present stage she is in. She is working as an translator for the police department now, especially translating wiretaps of drug smugglers from Arabic to English. One day she uses what she hears in the wiretap to do something. Whether what she does is good or bad, I won't tell you. Things snowball beyond that, the action explodes and what happens after that is told in the rest of the story.
The thing I loved the most about the story was the narrator's voice. It is cool, charming, irreverent, doesn't beat around the bush, calls a spade a spade. From the first passage –
"My parents were crooks, with a visceral love of money. For them it wasn’t an inert substance stashed away in a suitcase or held in some account. No. They loved it as a living, intelligent being that could create and destroy, possessing the gift of reproduction. Something mighty that forged destinies, that separated beauty from ugliness, winners from losers. Money was Everything; the distillation of all that could be bought in a world where everything was for sale. It was the answer to every question. It was the pre-Babel language that united mankind."
– Patience's voice grabs our attention and never lets go. Patience is such an awesome narrator.
The story is very gripping too. I read most of the book on one day. We can call this noir fiction and it is up there with the best. French crime fiction is soaring high these days and this is a shining example of that. Another thing I loved about the book is that there are really no bad characters. Or rather the story depicts people as imperfect with flaws and so we see people as they really are – there are no simplistic black-and-white depictions here. I loved that aspect of the book. I loved most of the characters in the book, especially the nurse Khadija who takes care of Patience's mom, Khadija's son Afid, Philippe the police officer who is in love with Patience, Bouchta Patience's nanny when she was a kid, Madame Lò Patience's neighbour, and DNA, Patience's dog. They are all fascinating characters.
I don't know whether the story is pure imagination or is inspired by real events. The author is a practising criminal lawyer and she has thanked translators who work in the court. If the story is inspired by real events, then the book is a scathing commentary on some aspects of life in today's France.
I loved 'The Godmother'. I discovered that it has been made into a movie with Isabelle Huppert in the lead role. I can't wait to watch that. I want to read more books by Hannelore Cayre now.
Have you read 'The Godmother'? What do you think about it?
December 30, 2019
Ohmygodholycowwhatthefuckdidijustread?!?!?
I LOVED LOVED LOVED this book. Simply unbelievable! The Godmother, what a woman! This made me feel like I was watching a French police procedural film, and now that I know it has, in fact, been made into a film starring Isabelle Huppert as The Godmother, it's almost beyond perfect. Seriously, this book absolutely blew me away. Completely original, unlike anything I have ever read in my life. The titular character, Patience Portefeux, is splendidly drawn and utterly fascinating. a complete kick-ass lady. I read this in one sitting and was entranced. I won't even bother trying to summarize or go into more gushing praise. Just read this damned book.
Highest possible recommendation. I cannot wait to see the film!!!
I LOVED LOVED LOVED this book. Simply unbelievable! The Godmother, what a woman! This made me feel like I was watching a French police procedural film, and now that I know it has, in fact, been made into a film starring Isabelle Huppert as The Godmother, it's almost beyond perfect. Seriously, this book absolutely blew me away. Completely original, unlike anything I have ever read in my life. The titular character, Patience Portefeux, is splendidly drawn and utterly fascinating. a complete kick-ass lady. I read this in one sitting and was entranced. I won't even bother trying to summarize or go into more gushing praise. Just read this damned book.
Highest possible recommendation. I cannot wait to see the film!!!
December 4, 2019
A very satisfying crime novel. That may seem like a strange statement but Cayre managed to write her main character in such a way as to make her admirable.....and intrepid. So often novels color the *criminals* as hateful creatures, out to hurt others. Patience Portefeux is trying to make it through life, like so many others to whom a bad hand has been dealt. The story highlights the issues of taking care of aging parents along with those facing immigrants in France, all the while making it just slightly comic. Such is life.
January 29, 2020
This short novel is full of layers of meaning, well-drawn characters and action, presenting a very different view of French society from the usual stereotype. The central character is acerbic and engages in crime, having grown up as the daughter of a crime boss. However, she has morals and ethics and is looking for love. It is amazing how much of the lives of many of the characters are unpacked, given the shortness of the novel. They are nearly all “outsiders”, foreigners; facing immense discrimination in France. Great translation; it read as an English novel, not a translated work.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 609 reviews