Marie Redonnet

Whenever Lilo went to the lighthouse on the seaside, Lala would read aloud to Lurm from a book. When I was in my studio on the Seine I had the book with me. Kurlu had left a message on the answering machine. After Jack Bobbin and I flew to the seaside I asked Louie about the book. He often read books while working at the front desk in the Seaside Hotel and he said that at bottom it was an attractively tawdry thriller.

Lilo moved away to manage the Sea's Side Casino. Lail and Cryz thought she was as glamourous as Lali the movie star or Carlotta the famous singer. The televsion crew were filming. Kurlu asked me to a wrap party, but so many people were murdered that Lummy cancelled it. I had put on my green summer Givenchy gown and my forcedly simple writing style but threw the gown into the lighthouse-keeper's bonfire. I kept the writing style though because it was the only one I had and it reminded me of the poetry Lulu's son Lao wrote. Lao likes airports as much as I do. I met him in Arrivals. After drinking lemonades we went from Departures to an abandoned dance hall siding the sea that was near an empty airport hangar. It was an evocative or a random setting but it wasn't then he said that the book's author was equal to Echenoz and Robbe-Grillet.

In my studio on the Seine I wondered where the last year had gone. After I put on my red dress and the puce headband that had looked so nice on Ma's head, I went to Winkle's dining room. Laramie was there, and he told me that I had been wrong to trust Lao and Louie and internet descriptions of the book.

Lulu, Carlotta, Lummy, and the Interpol detective were murdered, and Jack Bobbin wasted away with one of those diseases that Europeans who sleep with Africans get. I wondered how I had wasted away a year at seaside hotels and in my studio on the Seine. Lime wondered why I had wasted an hour reading the book.… (mer)

Wow. What an unrelenting disaster that constantly gets remade and disfigured. Redonnet's creation is set against a backdrop of water and swallowing sands. In addition to the sponge-like rotting of anything made of wood, everything else is corroding and falling into disrepair. Especially the humans. Even birds. Disease and discomfort permeate the novel as does the swamp's encroachment on anything thought to be stable. The constant bombardment of reality disrupts the head-in-the-clouds utopia wishing to prevail. This is a dream no one should want. And it never stops. Why does anyone read a book like this? And then, why not?… (mer)

Basically a one-star crapola, but because I do like Marie Redonnet, and I do know she can do better, she gets two. What a waste of her time and mine. Infantile, juvenile, and sophomoric. Anyone wishing for lists of names, and notes on what she might put into a novel if she were to sit down to the lonely and arduous task of writing one, quick grab a copy of this book. After completing my reading now of five of these short works, I quit, as any book following the first three in her opening trilogy happen to be junk. Any hidden literary code that might be revealed later to enable me to understand her secret work I have no interest in. I would rather stay dumb.… (mer)

Great title, but I refuse to make of something that isn't. Reading this was not exactly a complete waste of my time, but nearly. Present was the gratuitous Redonnet sex scenes, again nonchalantly played out by passive women used by violent men. A bit of compassion glints through a few of the lines, but love is rarely made viable. Far too many names basically listed (and deceased) to keep more than one or two straight. Redonnet might just as well have entered her material in two columns side by side, listing the verbs she engaged within these confounding actions beside each character's name. This little novel is nothing to write home about, unless somebody smarter than I am knows something I do not. Quite a disappointment after enjoying her earlier trilogy.… (mer)