topics: |  fiction | french

The novel's greatest virtue is its rapid pace, which slows only for moments
of cafe observation and philosophy. We follow Felix Ferrer, a recently
divorced, sexually hyperactive gallery owner. Ferrer's assistant, Delahaye,
tells him about the Nechilik, a small commercial ship that was carrying a
fortune in paleoarctic art when it ran aground almost a half century
earlier. The wreck was never recovered, and Delahaye dies a few weeks after
telling Ferrer about the treasure. So Ferrer takes a sabbatical from his
midlife crisis, his mistresses and his gallery to fly to Canada, cross the
Arctic Circle by icebreaker and trek via dogsled to the ship's last known
location. He finds the vessel and its antiquities intact and returns with the
loot to Paris, only to have the collection stolen before he can insure
it. Ferrer, a man without self-pity, bounces back. The plot continues swiftly
to a surprising conclusion. Along the way, Echenoz delivers acute
observations on everything from the Paris Métro system to the problem with
ill-fitting socks to obnoxious perfume. ("Bérangère Eisenmann is a
big-boned, fun-loving girl, highly perfumed.... The perfume issue quickly
became a problem. Extatics Elixir is a terribly sour and insistent scent,
which teeters dangerously on the cusp between spikenard and cesspit, which
satisfies while it attacks, excites while it smothers.") "I'm Gone"
combines the policier, the cultural essay and the urban sex novel to create a
vivid, entertaining hybrid.  -  Paul Kafka-Gibbons
http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/25/bib/010325.rv093929.html

The "mesmerizing" (Booklist), Prix Goncourt-winning novel. Hailed as "vivid
and entertaining" by the New York Times Book Review, this Goncourt
Prize-winning new novel from the writer the Washington Post calls "the
distinctive voice of his generation" and "the master magician of the
contemporary French novel," was an immediate bestseller in France and, in
this new paperback edition, stands to bring French phenomenon Jean Echenoz to
a whole new American readership.

Jean Echenoz's new novel, I'M GONE (New Press, $22.95), is very
French. Echenoz combines a crime story, an anthropological study of Paris, a
meditation on love and sex and a journey to exotic lands. "I'm Gone" won
the 1999 Prix Goncourt and is now crossing the Atlantic in an agile,
colloquial translation by Mark Polizzotti. The novel's greatest virtue is its
rapid pace, which slows only for moments of cafe observation and
philosophy. We follow Felix Ferrer, a recently divorced, sexually hyperactive
gallery owner. Ferrer's assistant, Delahaye, tells him about the Nechilik, a
small commercial ship that was carrying a fortune in paleoarctic art when it
ran aground almost a half century earlier. The wreck was never recovered, and
Delahaye dies a few weeks after telling Ferrer about the treasure. So Ferrer
takes a sabbatical from his midlife crisis, his mistresses and his gallery to
fly to Canada, cross the Arctic Circle by icebreaker and trek via dogsled to
the ship's last known location. He finds the vessel and its antiquities
intact and returns with the loot to Paris, only to have the collection stolen
before he can insure it. Ferrer, a man without self-pity, bounces back. The
plot continues swiftly to a surprising conclusion. Along the way, Echenoz
delivers acute observations on everything from the Paris Métro system to the
problem with ill-fitting socks to obnoxious perfume. ("Bérangère Eisenmann
is a big-boned, fun-loving girl, highly perfumed.... The perfume issue
quickly became a problem. Extatics Elixir is a terribly sour and insistent
scent, which teeters dangerously on the cusp between spikenard and cesspit,
which satisfies while it attacks, excites while it smothers.") "I'm Gone"
combines the policier, the cultural essay and the urban sex novel to create a
vivid, entertaining hybrid. Paul Kafka-Gibbons, March 25, 2001
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE1D9143DF936A15750C0A9679C8B63