The book I didn't want to write / Erwan Larher ; translated from the French by Brent Keever.
Language: English Original language: French Publication details: Vancouver, BC : Locarno Press, 2018.Description: 287 pagesISBN:- 9781988996004 (hardcover)
- 843/.92 23
Item type | Current library | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
800 - 899 | Hanover Public Library Shelves | 843.92 LARH (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 31906001131052 |
Browsing Hanover Public Library shelves, Shelving location: Shelves Close shelf browser (Hides shelf browser)
839.82 IBSE Four major plays / | 842.914 BEC Waiting for Godot : tragicomedy in two acts / | 842 MOL The School for Wives | 843.92 LARH The book I didn't want to write / | 844 MON Montaigne Selected Essays, by michel de Montaigne, edited by Blanchard Bates | 848 VOL Candide, and other writings / | 882 SOPH Sophocles I. |
Erwan Larher was enjoying a rock concert in Paris’ Bataclan Theater on November 13, 2015, when the firing started. In this genre-bending, deeply moving and unexpected memoir, Larher reflects on what the gruesome terror attack meant to him and to others. The Book I Didn’t Want to Write transcends bearing witness. Larher’s voice is intertwined with others―his partner, his father, the two friends who were going to come but didn’t―to create a deeply moving collective chronicle of the most violent night in French history since World War II. He recounts not only how such an act affected him and his loved ones, but the thousands who lived through that night, the millions who followed the event through media, and even the attackers themselves. ‘You were in the wrong place at the wrong time; you’re a miracle, not a victim,’ he writes. Larher is anything but self-pitying. The book is all the more remarkable in its stoic, bold approach: perhaps to be expected from one of France’s most beloved rock-n-roll novelist with a suitably gritty look at the world and at words. There is no tearful history, unhealthy voyeurism or grudge-settling. Instead, Larher explains how he must, ‘write around because you are a novelist and not a chronicler, because you can only shape a text by appeasing literature.’ The Book I Didn’t Want to Write is remarkable in both its construction and content. It achieves what few titles can―and exactly what Larher set out to do―to remind us of life’s emotional and artistic depths despite tragedy. It is a masterful slap in the face and a hymn to life.
There are no comments on this title.