Tangled Web UK Review September 2008
Fairy Godmother by
Daniel Pennac
pbk out August 08
(Harvill)
at £6.99
If you are one of those who is convinced that very little new or innovative is possible within the crime genre, I have two pieces of advice.
First of all, move heaven and earth (I’m a little late on this one) to see Kitano Takeshi’s prize-winning Hana-Bi (unhyphenated this is Japanese for fireworks; hyphenated it becomes flowers and fire, an important key to the film), the most heart-achingly romantic crime movie you will ever see. Secondly read this book. For both you will need an open mind, a taste for experiment, and a little patience as the style and characters take their hold.
This book for instance, starts with three pages detailing the progress of "an ancient wobbly old biddy", watched by various people in the vicinity, across a sheet of black ice in the multi-racial Belleville quarter of Paris. As she inches her way perilously across the ice, Pennac is inside the head of one of the observers, a racist under-cover cop, one of a team investigating the recent local murders of various similarly old ladies. Half-way across the ice to help her, an act inspired less by the "swollen goodness" of his heart than by the desire to impress the Arab locals, she blows him away with an ancient German P.38 pistol, his head exploding like "a beautiful flower".
The ensuing pages are enlivened by a rich pot-pourri of characters enough to people a book of twice the length. For a start there is Benjamin Malaussène, the central character and professional scapegoat (read the book!) and his extraordinary household - sisters, brothers, four granddads, his mother and "Saint" Stojilkovicz, the jovial Yugoslav who runs a coach service for the benefit of the local pensioners. The police are equally extraordinary, not least the young Inspector Pastor and his infallible but mysterious interrogation methods, though that does not prevent them from reaching all the wrong conclusions.
There is no doubt however where Pennac’s sympathies lie. The theme is tolerance in a world where little of importance can be judged from the surface of things; the style is eccentric, varied, funny and mischievous, sometimes shocking (few scenes I have read convey the sheer random waste of the act of murder better than that in Chapter 13). It’s also a twisting and satisfying mystery. The effect is one of the most delightful crime novels for some time.
Not an easy book to translate, I suspect, but Ian Monk, whose previous work includes Les Revenentes, the Georges Perec novella written using "e" as the only vowel, seems to have carried out the task with aplomb. Please support this one. There are three more Malaussène novels to come. It would be nice if they sold as well here as in France.
(
Bob Cornwell
)
Thousands of New and used Books at your Fingertips...
Support Tangled Web - Buy Your Books Online
