With references to Proust and comparisons to Evelyn Waugh, this is probably genius, but I really disliked this book. It left me completely cold. I'm so glad I didn't buy it.
Charlie, a screenwriter of popular hits, is told he has a terminal condition with months to live. To deal with writer's block, he decides to sell his house and lose all the money at the casinos in St. Tropez. Then he will be truly free. When he finds he is not losing fast enough (sometimes winning), he meets the beautiful Angelique, who is only too happy to help him lose - if they lose a million a day, they will have 25 days before he is broke. While she gambles, he sits in the casino restaurant writing a novel about the nature of consciousness. His three characters are stuck on a train and discuss evolutionary psychology, duality and awareness of awareness until I was completely bored. Psychology interests me but this felt like a closed conversation. Charlie abandons his novel and moves a southern island where he wanders the beaches screaming, thinks about his ex-wife and daughter, and hangs out with the art crowd. Somehow he ends up in a hut in the Sahara.
Populated with facile characters I didn't believe in, discussing ideas in ways that didn't engage me, I grew irritated and knew I was wasting my time. I was intrigued by the premise and the idea his situation created his fictional characters, but it pretentiously rolled along without point. Short at just 196 pages, it didn't lead me anywhere, it didn't even let me in.
The NYTimes called it "a quick-witted and subtly disturbing comedy" while The Guardian says "it fatally undermines itself". It reminded me how much I dislike Evelyn Waugh.
Must be genius, but I thought it was the worst.
2000 / Hardcover / 196 pages
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