Unforgivable: A Novel

by Philippe Djian

Overview

The Basque landscape is a delightfully sinister setting for the taut and cinematic Unforgivable, the #1 bestseller from French novelist Philippe Djian. Francis, a sixty-year-old author, has not written a word in the twelve years since his first wife and eldest daughter died in a tragic accident. Now his surviving daughter, Alice, a famous actress, has vanished, leaving her husband and twin daughters clueless as to her whereabouts. Francis’s second marriage of ten years, to Judith, is also falling apart, and his distress is compounded by his anxiety over Alice’s disappearance. He finds comfort in the company of an old friend, Anne-Marguerite, along with her son, Jérémie, a laconic criminal attempting to remake himself in the outside world. But when Francis employs them to uncover evidence of his second wife’s affair and to help find his daughter, things go from bad to worse.

An exquisite storyteller and prose writer, author Djian "has no equal . . . as the interrogator of the relationships that bind human beings together" (Vogue, France). A mesmerizing literary thriller, Unforgivable is full of setbacks and revelations—an unsettling and starkly elegant meditation on family bonds, betrayals, and reconciliation.

Customer Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439170182
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	03/09/2010
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Philippe Djian is the renowned author of more than twenty novels, including Assassins, Frictions, Impuretés, and the bestseller 37°2 le matin, published in the United States as Betty Blue and adapted for film by Jean-Jacques Beineix. A #1 bestseller in France, Unforgivable (Impardonnables) received the 2009 Prix Jean Freustié, a prize given to a French author for a work in prose. Djian lives in Paris.

Editorial Reviews

Billed as a literary thriller, this clever if downbeat novel from French author Djian (Betty Blue) is likely to appeal more to mainstream readers than genre fans. Francis, a fussy, 60-year-old writer, and his second wife, who live in a tiny village on France's Atlantic coast, await the arrival of his screen actress daughter, Alice. When Alice fails to show, her husband reveals that she's missing and presumed kidnapped. Unhappy with the police response, Francis hires PI Anne-Marguerite Lémo, who happens to be a casual lover of his from years ago, to look for Alice. Anne-Marguerite's misfit son, Jérémie, who's been recently released from prison, joins the group orbiting the not particularly likable Francis. Djian slowly discloses the story of Alice and Francis in flashbacks and flash forwards, an unusual approach that lends the book much of its interest. The mystery of Alice's disappearance serves mainly as a vehicle for exploring the various personal relationships. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Philippe Djian has no equal, amongst French authors, as the interrogator of the relationships that bind human beings together . . . it is this humanity—tackled head-on in all its complexity—that draws him close to the great Anglo-Saxon writers. Djian is incontestably the most American of French writers.” —Vogue (France)

“[Unforgivable] is impossible to put down.” —Libération

“Philippe Djian [delivers] a beautiful exercise of self-deprecating humor . . . Various reflections [on] paternity, on writing, on relationship erosion, and on aging, [Unforgivable] treats serious subjects . . . with seriousness but without taking itself too seriously.”

—L’Express

“[Unforgivable] is a vertiginous fall . . . [using] flashbacks, a host of dilapidated secondary characters, country roads, and stylistic brainwaves . . . Unforgivable resembles its author: a dark and disquieting gaze, strong nerves . . . and an irresistible charm.” —Elle

“Djian, here at the height of his talent, is capable of giving life to the sixty-year-old Francis, at once violently egocentric and infantile, engaging and unreasonable . . . a profoundly thoughtful novel . . . the minute examination of parent-child relations, the theme of forgiveness and of mercy, are only at the surface of a much larger aesthetic and ethical ambition: to detail the craft of life and love . . . remarkably well done.” —Télérama

“Djian has the genius to succeed in two genres at once, the genre of the intimate diary . . . and the ‘sea, sex, and sun’ genre, stormy at times. He writes panoramically, wide-screen, the seaside under a telescope, Californian sky, the angle of the camera well-chosen between the lawn and the garden path . . . Unforgivable is the account of a misanthropic charmer . . . you won’t be bored for a second.” —Le Point

“A long journey of doubt, of obsession, and, above all, of setbacks and blows. Economic prose . . . and very sharp. Djian’s language rings true.” —Métro

“[Djian’s] imagination has rarely been as fertile . . . a reflection on the way literature ingests the whole life of an author. That, for Djian, is surely true.” —Livres Hebdo

From the Publisher