A delightfully short novel about a middle aged man, Ferrer, who starts this novel off by leaving his wife and deciding to recover a huge stash of valuable artefacts from the Artic wastes, to sell in his art gallery. Of course there are disastrous consequences, to great comic effect, yet the novel manages to end, rather against trend these days, happily ever after. Echenoz has a marvellous sense of his characters, and gleefully takes it upon himself, as the story's omniscient narrator, to say quite honestly whatever he likes, be it slight praise or crushing invective. Naturally this makes the book, at times, hysterical, as well as providing effective insights into the nature of relations between men and women as Ferrer jumps from bed to bed, all the time reminded by his doctors to be mindful of his heart. The only real criticism of the novel is the feeling there should be more, so much more than what the final on-hand work is; yet, with a narrator this refreshingly scathing in his nature and humorous to boot, this may well be the longest short novel you'll read for a long time.

This offbeat French novel (which won the Prix Médicis in 1983) is hard to pin down. It more or less follows the story of George Chave, a tall but otherwise nondescript middle-aged Parisian collector of jazz records. He lives off a meager inheritance until one day he meets a woman, falls in love, and discovers the need for greater income. This more or less leads him to a job at a very strange detective agency, where he is involved in searches for a rare missing parrot, a runaway wife, the heir to a great fortune, and becomes entangled in a weird cult. Along the way one meets geriatric booksellers, giant thugs, intrepid policemen, suspicious private eyes, a homicidal cousin, actors and actresses, an odd Englishmen, a police informer, and several others. That, in a nutshell, explains what's wrong with the book-there are too many characters in too small a space and keeping track of everyone's agendas gets to be rather a chore. However, the prose is both dry and humorous, and worth reading for its' own sake. You have to love a book that starts with, "One day a man came out of a shed."

Jean Echenoz's "I'm Gone" is about a French art dealer who leaves his wife and engages in some international shennanigans, resulting in confusion and excitement, almost like a James Bond story for the average guy. The writing is polished, and the vocabulary good (actually, not so much "good" as overdone, like the author had just bought a thesaurus and was giving it a test-drive). The protagonist and plot both seemed interesting as the book went along, but ultimately both were pointless and superficial.

It was like riding in a fancy limousine, smiling happily and having a sip of champagne, but then being asked brusquely to step out, and finding you did nothing but go quickly around the block. The book left this reviewer with no afterthoughts whatsoever. It's actually quite forgettable. Unfortunately, I don't even remember having enjoyed it while reading it, I remember being relatively confused by the plot's believability and pointlessness, otherwise I might have recommended it as a good "beach time" read.

This short novel is a potpourri of genres--it's a mystery, a social commentary on life in Paris (with the requisite French digs at other countries, including the U.S.), a travel/adventure story, a meditation about love and lust, and a study of midlife crisis. Its main character, Felix Ferrer, a marginally successful gallery owner whose main preoccupation is his own ego, is interested in locating and then selling paleoarctic artifacts from a ship lost near the Arctic Circle long ago, when it became icebound. When the artifacts, his former partner, his wife, a succession of girlfriends, and his financial security all disappear within a short period of time, Felix rouses himself and sets out to regain the artifacts, and, perhaps, some control over his life.

Echenoz is an immensely skillful writer. He creates a fast-paced narrative in which Ferrer ranges from his Parisian art gallery, to the Arctic, where he lives with a seal-hunting family (nice contrasts here), and back to Paris and Spain, and Echenoz makes these transitions seamlessly. His imagery is often striking, and there's a good deal of sardonic humor and light satire about Parisian life. His ability to make the reader see the world through the eyes of Ferrer, and his observations about people, are sometimes startling and original.

Unfortunately, the "hero," Ferrer, is so blasé and so obnoxiously self-satisfied that it's difficult to care much about his world or what happens to him, and the whole novel feels smug. The unnamed narrator's snide and self-important asides degenerate rapidly from cute to annoying ("Personally, I've had it up to here with [a certain character]. His daily life is too boring."). The characters' casual cruelty toward everyone in a subordinate position, their universal lack of "engagement," and their treatment of women as objects further distance the reader and reflect the feeling that becoming involved or caring intensely about anything at all is somehow unsophisticated or bourgeois. Although the author is hugely talented and his book did win the Prix Goncourt, it lacks the vitality and sense of commitment I've come to associate with this prize. And if it's satire, it somehow rings too true.

I love to read (trite, right?). I got wind of this book throught the Times Literary Supplement in which they said that M. Polizzotti got an award for translating a Prix Gouncourt awarded novel called "I'm Gone" by Jean Echenoz. So I ordered it....and read it within one sitting and it reinforced my behavior of seeking out "that one book"...the book that makes you read past your bedtime...because of the plot. But also because of the writing and the way the novelist arranged the piece of fiction. Luckily you do not have to take my word on this...just read the reviews from France and look at this author's stellar history (every book he writes seems to get an award). It frustrates me that I in the USA am often not privy to brilliant fiction writers throughout the world merely because their works are not tranlated into English. I thank Mr. Polizzotti for translating this work. What a wonderful read.....one reviewer ahead of me (on amazon.com) said he knew what what was coming before it was read. I pride myself in being somewhat intelligent (Univ of Chicago Professor) and did not see the major "punchline" coming. So maybe the other reviewer knows more than me but I wanted to say from my perspective, this was one of the best works of modern-day fiction I have read ever.

Echenoz is a big cheese in French lit, and having kind of enjoyed his 1983 Prix Médicis-winning book Cherokee, I thought I'd check out this 1987 novel of his. The thing I didn't like about Cherokee was its huge cast of characters, and again, there are a lot of people to keep track of and quite a lot happens, but none of it seems to be of any consequence. Kind of a style over substance problem. The plot can barely be summarized, but basically it revolves around gunrunning. Parisians Paul and Bob sell guns illegally and are interested in Justine. Jeff (aka Jean-Francois, AKA Pons, AKA Duke) and Charles need guns to stir up a little trouble in Malaysia so that Jeff can be a plantation manager/feudal lord without any interference from the pesky owners. They both used to be interested in Justine's mother, Nicole, and Charles is also Paul's uncle. Finally, there are some Belgian gangsters, Plankaert, Toon, and Van Os, who are mad that Paul and Bob won't sell them guns and thus kidnap Justine. (If you intend to read the book, do yourself a favor and print this out, 'cause trying to keep it straight as you're reading ain't easy.)

What sounds simple and straightforward above, really isn't in Echenoz's fractured style. He playfully hops, skips, and jumps, all over the place, and while it's not an experimental work, it's a far cry from traditional narrative structure. It's more about the rhythm of the story and the irony and comedy derived from his telling a series of melodramatic events in a exceedingly deadpan way. There's the kidnapping or two, a mutiny, bank robbery, worker uprising, lost loves, unrequited longing, long-lost relations, and all manner of melodrama. Some scenes are quite wonderful and witty, however, the story is never really taken seriously by the author, and thus the book is kind of a big piece of steaming irony. (It's not without reason that there's an academic work in French titled, "Irony in the Works of Echenoz"). It gets pretty tiresome after the first quarter of the book, and I don't think I'll be bothering to seek out any more of his stuff, although the Prix Goncourt-winning I'm Gone is supposed to be quite good.