Ne Pars Pas, by Florian Parent

[Ulysses]

Ne Pars Pas (Do not leave)
By Florian Parent
Published by the author, 2021
Four stars

This doesn’t seem to be available in an English translation, but I want to review it anyway.

I read in French so that my sixteen years of studying French remains alive and the beautiful language itself doesn’t wither and die in my brain. For me, reading French is like reading Shakespeare—after a few pages, it all slips back into place. But a novel by a young author like Florian Parent is especially fun, because he writes in modern, young-person French. Lots of great slang and common-use foreign words (especially computer and tech things) to learn.

This is a sweet, eerie, poignant book. At first, it seems to be a lost-love ghost story, but fairly quickly turns into a tale of technological nightmares—literally and figuratively.

It is the story of Lucas Guillot, a young, up-and-coming master pastry chef (pâtissier) in Paris. As he stands on the deck of his glamorous seaside villa in the resort town of Biscarrosse in France, he watches the sunset—just as he used to do with “him,” someone he loved very much and who he has lost. Before the sunset is done, Lucas turns and heads back inside. And then the phone rings.

This is the world of the COVID pandemic, and also the world of increasingly intrusive technology (Alexa, turn off the lights) that both benefits and threatens our health and our sanity. It is a story of love derailed by work/life imbalance, and an international tale of corporate intrigue and ambition.

The French view of the world is not the same as my American one. That makes reading a French author’s story educational beyond the enjoyment of literature. Parent might not be Flaubert or Balzac (two authors I loved at university), but he brings to his novel the same kind of “right now” insight into global culture and the French part in it.

At least one of Parent’s books has been translated into English. I’m reading that one next: in French.