This has definitely got to be the worst book I have read this year so far… It really reminded me of my worst book of 2019, “Submission” by Michel Houellebecq. The style of the two of them really resembled, the story being told from the point of view of a despicable, misogynist and racist guy. Someone who simply due to the fact that one of his girlfriend’s died at a young age decided to treat all the rest of the women in his life like shit. When you read phrases like these, you just wonder what kind of a person you need to be as an author in order to draft out such a disgusting character:

Je n’ai jamais cessé d’être méchant avec toi […]. Abîmer ta beauté était un plaisir ; une nécessité ; une joie. Un besoin.

p. 53

Welcome to the world of the main character, someone who thinks he’s simply the best male around, someone who can attract any woman he wants but “obviously” only wants the young and beautiful ones. The whole book is written in the style of a letter to the woman he feels heartbroken about, having been left by her, while masking his feelings behind insults towards her.

Je ne veux pas une femme qui glisse vers la mort. Je veux une femme au ralenti, qui fait demi-tour dedans son âge, une femme qui freine, une femme qui remonte les dates à l’envers.

p. 67

If that’s not enough to throw you off completely, you’ll also get the “reward” of reading through lists of all the women the main character has slept with, as well as the pleasure he took in mistreating them:

Je baisais pratiquement tout ce qui se pouvait baiser. Des étudiantes à profil de faon, des superbes à problèmes, des laides à bouquins, […] des négresses au sang salé, des juives enculables, des Arabes à pipes, […].

p. 86-87

Le plus souvent, c’était pour me débarrasser du corps prêt à s’endormir dans mon lit que je mentais. Je ne parle pas du corps pulpeux et frétillant d’avant le coït, mais du corps d’après la jouissance, je parle du corps dûment baisé, du corps amorti.

p. 89

Mes amours étaient des viandes ; un hachis de gibiers, de la fumée d’aliments. De la triste consommation. […] Ces filles, je les faisais parfois pleurer comme des crucifix. […] Inanimés morceaux d’êtres jetables ; jambons mus et désuets.

p. 90-91

I have forced myself through this horrible and short piece of 142 pages of writing for almost an entire week. There’s nothing that I took along from this reading experience (besides learning a couple of new words in French) and I curse the friend to hell, who has given me this book as a present for my birthday a couple of years ago…

P.S. While typing out the review here, I have once again been reminded why it’s not as much fun reviewing books in French… The inexistent amount of work that is put into the design of a cover just hurts my book-reader’s soul…

★☆☆☆☆ (1/5)

_{Edition: ISBN 978-2-246-85769-3
Grasset & Fasquelle, 2015}