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    The Mystery Guest: An Account
    Unavailable
    The Mystery Guest: An Account
    Unavailable
    The Mystery Guest: An Account
    Ebook88 pages1 hour

    The Mystery Guest: An Account

    By Grégoire Bouillier

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    When the phone rang on a gloomy fall afternoon in 1990, Grégoire Bouillier had no way of knowing that it was the woman who'd left him, without warning, ten years before. And he couldn't have guessed why she was calling—not to apologize for, or explain, the way she'd vanished from his life, but to invite him to a party. A birthday party. For a woman he'd never met.

    This is the story of how one man got over a broken heart, learned to love again, stopped wearing turtlenecks, regained his faith in literature, participated in a work of performance art by mistake, and spent his rent money on a bottle of 1964 bordeaux that nobody ever drank. The Mystery Guest is, in the words of L'Humanité, a work of "fiendish wit and refinement." It pushes the conventions of autobiography (and those great themes of French literature: love and aging) to an absurd, poignant, and very funny conclusion. This translation marks the English-language debut of an iconoclast who has attracted one of the most passionate cult followings in French literature today.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateAug 22, 2006
    ISBN9781429935678
    Unavailable
    The Mystery Guest: An Account
    Author

    Grégoire Bouillier

    Grégoire Bouillier’s first book, Rapport sur moi, received the 2002 Prix de Flore for an author of outstanding promise. The Mystery Guest (L’invité mystère) is his second book. He lives in Paris.

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    Reviews for The Mystery Guest

    4/5

    66 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This very brief book is amazing. For one thing, it belongs on the very short list of books that accurately depict the male mind, in this case the way men approach relationships, mentally and emotionally. And it is done with ironic wit. One can also read this book as the story of a man who lives his life through literature, or again as the story of a man whose life becomes literature. Great book, wry, heartfelt and maybe even profound.
    • 4/5
      I'll try to come up with something to say about this wonderful book in a little bit.