Yasmina Reza

"Tout le monde riait. Les Manoscrivi riaient. C'est l'image d'eux qui est restée. Jean-Lino, en chemise parme, avec ses nouvelles lunettes jaunes semi-rondes, debout derrière le canapé, empourpré par le champagne ou par l'excitation d'être en société, toutes dents exposées. Lydie, assise en dessous, jupe déployée de part et d'autre, visage penché vers la gauche et riant aux éclats. Riant sans doute du dernier rire de sa vie. Un rire que je scrute à l'infini. Un rire sans malice, sans coquetterie, que j'entends encore résonner avec son fond bêta, un rire que rien ne menace, qui ne devine rien, ne sait rien. Nous ne sommes pas prévenus de l'irrémédiable."-- Page 4 of cover.

This citation of Borges resonates with every character in Yasmina Reza's novel, except that they are never so lucky. In fact, what happens to them is the exact opposite of what they crave. The twenty short chapters that make up this unusual book deal with both marital and extramarital vicissitudes, the elusiveness of intimacy, the fear of loneliness, and the desire to be loved or at least understood just once in our lives. The mixing of tones--cruelty and despair competing with humor and fantasy--and the quality of the monologues--taut and highly original--adds to the novel's virtuosity. This is without a doubt Reza's most accomplished work.

Elisabeth is a woman whose curiosity and passion far exceed the borders of her quiet middle-class life. She befriends a neighbor, organizes a small dinner party. And then, quite suddenly, finds herself embarked with him on an adventure that is one part vaudeville and one part high tragedy. A quiet novel of manners turns into a police procedural thriller. Her motivations for risking everything she has are never transparent. In a world where matters of life and death are nearly always transported to a clinical setting, whether it be a hospital or a courtroom, here each character must confront them unassisted.

A train compartment. A man and a woman. In a series of dazzling internal monologues, the man, a novelist, muses on his latest work, contemplates the futility of writing, and considers his life in terms of his friends, his daughter, her lover, and the workings of Ex-Lax on his digestive system. The woman thinks about her life, her loves, and her friendships in the full knowledge that the man she is facing is the novelist she admires and would love to speak to, and whose latest work she has tucked in her handbag. Christopher Hampton's elegant translation of Yasmina Reza's sharp, witty and sexy play explores the "nostalgia for what might happen".--From publisher description.

La dramaturge a suivi N. Sarkozy pendant plusieurs mois et brosse le portrait d'un homme parti à la conquête du pouvoir.

An old man reflecting upon his life, marriages, friendships, love affairs, and the enragingly separate existence of his spoiled and lost only son.