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The Alphonse Courrier AffairEditions
Review
In its detailed, sharp portrait of provincial gossip and intrigue, this novel is often funny. But it is a tragedy, not a comedy: the emotional tangles are conveyed with precision and subtlety, so that the shocking conclusion must convince the reader. It is a worthy winner of the 2001 ‘Independent’ foreign fiction award. - review by Johnny de Falbe |
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John Sandoe [Books] Ltd |
Translated from the Italian, this powerful novel is set in a small village in the Auvergne in the early years of the twentieth century. Alphonse Courrier has everything going for him: a successful business, respect among the locals, an independent mind and imagination. When he marries Agnès, it is not for love but because she is respectable and beautiful – she will make a fine wife, however narrow and insufferably complacent she is. By choosing her, Courrier believes he has done his duty by the village and posterity and now he can get back to what really matters to him. For he has a secret: every Tuesday and Friday evening, he is visited in his shop by the ugly Adèle, whom he truly loves. He is an able, strong man who usually manages things to his advantage, but events conspire against him…
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