Jean Detrez, the narrator of Belgian author Toussaint\u2019s novel (in Polizzotti\u2019s translation from French), has a lot on his mind. When the novel begins, it\u2019s 2016\u2014specifically, the time around the Brexit vote on June 23. Jean\u2019s marriage to a woman named Diane is also coming to an end. A few months later, flipping through his phone, Jean comes across a racy photograph of a woman, prompting him to think about the futurology retreat where it was taken. It\u2019s through his reactions to fellow participants at that event that we learn more about Jean, who works for the European Commission; he’s alienated less by the snobbery than by \u201cthe casual familiarity\u201d with which one attendee discussed prominent politicians. At the retreat, he meets an Estonian woman named Enid, with whom he has a brief emotional affair. Jean then muses on the aftermath of his father\u2019s death later that same year, which leads to him considering his ties to his brother and wondering if his father\u2019s death corresponds to the end of an era\u2014giving way to a time \u201cin which excess, slander, and mendacity had taken over the public forum, in which respect for the facts no longer had the inviolate character it had always enjoyed in the past.\u201d There\u2019s also the matter of his strained relationship with Diane and his warmer relationship with his first wife, Elisabetta, whose existence doesn\u2019t come up until two-thirds of the way into the book. Jean is thoughtful in places, with a couple of moving invocations of Stefan Zweig’s life, but it gradually becomes clear that his professional success doesn\u2019t necessarily translate into an ideal personal or marital life. Toussaint has written a subtle but bracing exploration of his protagonist\u2019s perceptions and failings.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jean Detrez, the narrator of Belgian author Toussaint\u2019s novel (in Polizzotti\u2019s translation from French), has a lot on his mind. When the novel begins, it\u2019s 2016\u2014specifically, the time around the Brexit vote on June 23. Jean\u2019s marriage to a woman named Diane is also coming to an end. A few months later, flipping through his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5099"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}