Book

The birthday party / Laurent Mauvignier ; translated from the French by Daniel Levin Becker.

ISBN: 9781945492655
ISBN: 1945492651
Physical Description: 446 pages ; 21 cm
Publisher: Oakland, California : Transit Books, [2022]
Copyright: &copy;2022

Mauvignier, Laurent, (author.). Levin Becker, Daniel, (translator.).

Summary:

"Buried deep in rural France, little remains of the isolated hamlet of the Three Lone Girls, save a few houses and a curiously assembled quartet: Patrice Bergogne, inheritor of his family's farm; his wife, Marion; their daughter, Ida; and their neighbor, Christine, an artist. While Patrice plans a surprise for his wife's fortieth birthday, inexplicable events start to disrupt the hamlet's quiet existence: anonymous, menacing letters, an unfamiliar car rolling up the driveway. And as night falls, strangers stalk the houses, unleashing a nightmarish chain of events. Told in rhythmic, propulsive prose that weaves seamlessly from one consciousness to the next over the course of a day, Laurent Mauvignier's The Birthday Party is a deft unraveling of the stories we hide from others and from ourselves, a gripping tale of the violent irruptions of the past into the present, written by a major contemporary French writer."