Reading in translation, like hearing a story second-hand, is always a precarious business. So many thorns to impale yourself on. Not the least of which is the trust we place in the translator to bring us not only the author’s words but their intentions as well. We know our own culture so well that often we imagine it is reality itself.
“The Mystery of Henri Pick” by David Foenkinos has been translated from French for us. I know too little of French culture to be critical of Sam Taylor’s translation. So a French reader may well scoff, chuckle or choke at my take on this surprising provincial love story.
How do you write a novel about the last hours of love? Like the dying of the light at a cricket match it could well be a desultory, rather chaotic, business. But David Foenkinos finds a clever way. Not a story within a novel but rather a novel within a story.
A brilliant and marketable novel is found in a library of rejected and unpublished manuscripts in Crozon, Brittany. The place and manner of its chance discovery adds to its commercial worth. The author listed on the manuscript is a local man, the owner and chef of a local creperie, one Henri Pick. Unfortunately Henri has died two years earlier but that only enhances the appeal of the novel. The novel’s title, “The Last Hours of a Love Affair” supplies the raciness needed to complete the commercial package.
Sadly Henri is not a winner, unless posthumous fame is a worthy prize. There are winners though. The young woman working for a publishing house who discovered the manuscript is happy. Her husband who is trying to write a book also seems happy. Henri Pick’s wife and daughter who are in line for royalties from the publication, they seem happy. The townsfolk of Crozon are certainly happy with the influx of tourists keen to see the birthplace of a now famous book.
One man is not happy. A famous television critic whose good-life has suddenly gone belly up. He needs to claw his way back onto French prime time TV. He and he alone doubts that a simple crepe chef in the back blocks of France could possibly write such a deep and insightful novel into the desperation of love lost.
Yes, it is a detective story and the title is most apt. It is a mystery. David Foenkinos takes us along a trail of old love doubted, new love blighted and loves in various states of rank decay or passionate ascendency. And yes, at the end the mystery of Henri Pick is conclusively solved.
And did I think it was a well written book? It was interesting. I didn’t put it down. I kept turning the electronic pages on my iPad. I was surprised at the end. But was it good? I don’t really know. Did Sam Taylor do well with his translation? Was the book, in English, exactly as it was meant to be, in French. I was thinking three out of five when I finally put my iPad down.
At the End of the Day 