Henri Duchemin and His Shadows, by Emmanuel Bove

[Trevor]

Henri Duchemin and His Shadows



Publication Date: August 11, 2015
Pages: 143
Introduction by Donald Breckenridge.
Translated from the French by Alyson Waters.

Emmanuel Bove was one of the most original writers to come out of twentieth-century France and a popular success in his day. Discovered by Colette, who arranged for the publication of his first novel, My Friends, Bove enjoyed a busy literary career, until the German occupation silenced him. During his lifetime, Bove’s novels and stories were admired by Rainer Maria Rilke, the surrealists, Albert Camus, and Samuel Beckett, who said of him that “more than anyone else he has an instinct for the essential detail.”

Henry Duchemin and His Shadows is the perfect introduction to Bove’s world, with its cast of stubborn isolatoes who call to mind Herman Melville’s Bartleby, Robert Walser’s “little men,” and Jean Rhys’s lost women. The poet of the flophouse and the dive, the park bench and the pigeon’s crumb, Bove is also a deeply empathetic writer for whom no defeat is so great as to silence desire.

Contents:
-Night Crime
-Another Friend
-Night Visit
-What I Saw
-The Story of a Madman
-The Child's Return
-Is It a Lie?

[[deleted user]]

The admirers/comparisons have me drooling, this can't come soon enough!

[Trevor]

This arrived the other day, and it looks fantastic. I've updated the top post to include the contents.

[Trevor]

I've read up to the final story, and it's a fantastic book of stories. "Night Crime" is my favorite so far, and it alone makes the book worth it (though I'm enjoying the rest as well).

[Trevor]

Finished this up on a lunchtime walk today, and I'm going to miss it, even if none of the stories quite lived up to my experience with "Night Crimes." I hope that more Bove is on the way.

[Trevor]

This is out! My review is at my blog, The Mookse and the Gripes, if anyone is interested.

[Samuel]

Read the review on your blog yesterday, got me really psyched for this one as it seemed like the kind of book I enjoy. Thanks for everything you do here, Trevor, I really appreciate it.