THE FIRSTS: A History of French Superheroes, fun and relevant and undemanding

THE FIRSTS: A History of French Superheroes
XABI MOLIA (tr. Alexander Hertich)
Dalkey Archive (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The ugly side of superheroes

What if you suddenly had superpowers? What would you do? How would your friends and family react? What would your obligations to society be?

The superheroes’ first missions—combating terrorists or rescuing disaster victims—are a boon to France. Yet while these actions bring the country pride, unity quickly starts to unravel. These superheroes, ultimately, are human. Paparazzi are everywhere. One has an affair with another’s wife. Another questions following the government’s imperialist agenda. Meanwhile the public carps on social media.

Molia takes our fascination with superheroes and adds a cutting portrayal of contemporary social mores to create an entertaining and disturbing work with deep dystopian underpinnings.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Remember the 1995 one-hit wonder "(What If God Was) One of Us?" It was a monster hit around the world. Its central question was one I think troubles people; it makes us all wonder why her and not me, why is there such an unfair randomness to divinity, what Greeks explained as someone being a demigod like Achilles or Herakles.

What we now call "superheroes."

In the labyrinth of the human soul, the superhero is tucked into a corner along the same stretch of hallway as the demigod. It's about wanting the anthropomorphic Divine to share more substance with us, not seeing the genuinely miraculous, divine acts of creation we interact with daily: my meds, the ones that keep my blood free of oversupplies of uric acid, the ones that keep mmy heart beating in normal rhythm, the computer I'm typing on, the phone you're reading this on, the software, the microchips...all designed by a human, all manufactured by human-designed machines...miracles surround us, the divine in us engendered them. But we use our miracles profligately. The computer and internet that give us access to the immense body of knowledge that's enabled wonders also gave us social media and streaming news.

I think of the first examples as Divine, the last as what we humans do when our reach exceeds our grasp...or demigods those superheroes come to life. Philosophical 3am maunderings aside, the novel The Firsts uses our overreach to explain our grasp to us. The ordinary people with superpowers are observed, as we all are, and reported on, scrutinized as celebrities are as part of their bargain for our attention. It's not the newest wrinkle in the communal brain, the soap operas that are comic books have pulled this idea out every so often. I'm not blaming or running down the book or its author, no idea is totally new or it would be ignored or rejected. Delivering dystopian stories can't really add a burden of novelty onto the already painful message of self-examination's fruits.

Science fiction's used the media-snippets (notably, prize-baitingly The Sheep Look Up, about fifty-five years old) and for centuries before that epistolary novels (Dracula for one) fake that same sense of immediacy and intimacy of perception, for generations. updating it for newly available tech underlines the basic reality of the human desire to share...willingly or not...our fellows' and our betters' deepest depths. As long as they're glowed up, glossy, and either unthreatening or in some way humiliating to them but never to us.

It's not fresh, then, the format of this story's delivery, and it obeys all these rules. It's French so its reactions to two superheroes' scandalous infidelity is more gleeful in tone than the US puritanical moralizing judgment, but really what we have here is not groundbreaking fiction or social observation or advancement in techniques of writing.

But it's a damn fun day or reading as people, ordinary people, grapple with the tweaked superpowers we all factually possess (you read that list-paragraph above, right?); if you go into this read expecting a good time that's not as demanding of your concentration and thinking as most stories from this publisher are, you can enjoy a well-told tale in a format not new or fresh but well-used in the story's service.

DARD NOIR: CRUSH; BIRD IN A CAGE; THE WICKED GO TO HELL; all 4-plus star Pushkin Vertigo French thriller translations

THE WICKED GO TO HELL
FRÉDÉRIC DARD
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An undercover cop and a prison inmate play a tense game of cat and mouse in this brilliantly original thriller by the master of French noir

At one of France’s toughest prisons, an undercover cop is attempting to trap an enemy spy by posing as a fellow inmate. So Frank and Hal find themselves holed up together in a grimy, rat-infested cell, each warily eyeing the other. As they plan a daring escape, an unexpected friendship ensues—but which is the cop and which is the spy?

Gritty and hard-hitting, The Wicked Go to Hell is a tense, paranoid 1950s thriller about duty and conscience, deception and loyalty, and about what it means to be human—whether you’re the good guy or not.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Have you finished your Simenon shelf(s)? Are you tired of searching out Pascal Garnier books you haven't read? Pick up the scent of Frédéric Dard, the perpetrator of similar romans durs and noir-themed explorations of the human condition.

In this Jim Thompsonesque tale of convicted murderers who escape incarceration and, while on the run, develop a deeper regard for each other than they have for themselves. It's too short for me to say too much more, but the men are very much of a type that noir readers love to read about: Down on their luck men, violent and angry, who act out their lifelong received abuse all around them. They're very much victims of a system that cares nothing for or about them until they step out of line. Like Genet's homosexual versions, they're perpetrators of crime who see no wrong in getting what they need by any means necessary because absolutely no one anywhere will give it to them.

The twist ending is...foreshadowed a wee bit too strongly in the prologue. Maybe read that after you've finished the book. It won't take you much more than a long, cold Sunday afternoon to read, and it is as perfect a #Deathtober seasonal read as any I've found.

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CRUSH
FRÉDÉRIC DARD
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A slow-burning intelligent thriller with a wicked twist in the tail from one of the giants of French noir fiction

Bored with her mundane factory job, her nagging mother and her alcoholic father-in-law, Louise is captivated by a glamorous American couple who move to her industrial hometown in Northern France. The Roolands' home is an island of colour, good humour and easy living in drab 1950s Léopoldville, and soon Louise is working there as a maid. But once she is under her new employers' roof their model life starts to fall apart—painful secrets from their past emerge, cracks in their relationship appear and a dark obsession begins to grow, which will end in murder...

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Another long-afternoon read that feels so very French, and not the glamourous edge of Frenchness. We as foreigners probably don't think much about the huge bulk of France, a country that's close to the Netherlands on the north all the way to the Mediterranean in the south. It's about the size of Texas, for US readers, so very, very big and diverse.

This story takes place in the cold, rainy north, in a town of working-class folk...think Rust Belt/Great Lakes, US readers...being "invaded" by people who work for NATO, so are both foreign and educated. It's culture shock all around. This is always a chance for the chancers to move their station up...Louise, our narrator, is one who sees her chance to leave the boring beautyless trudge of her preordained life behind.

As always, the plan goes to hell once it connects with reality.

Louise is an unreliable narrator...you'll figure that out before page ten...and very much the manipulative minx. Her life was never going to be easy, but whose is? Does the twist at the end mean what its surface says it does?

You know by now Dard doesn't do wrapping-paper-and-bow endings. Go with him, pay attention to every word, and enjoy the places you'll go.

After all, you have the luxury of leaving them.

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BIRD IN A CAGE
FRÉDÉRIC DARD
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: It felt like the slipknot on a rope round my chest was being tightened without pity

Trouble is the last thing Albert needs. Travelling back to his childhood home on Christmas Eve to mourn his mother’s death, he finds the loneliness and nostalgia of his Parisian quartier unbearable… Until, that evening, he encounters a beautiful, seemingly innocent woman at a brasserie, and his spirits are lifted.

Still, something about the woman disturbs him. Where is the father of her child? And what are those two red stains on her sleeve? When she invites him back to her apartment, Albert thinks he’s in luck. But a monstrous scene awaits them, and he finds himself lured into the darkness against his better judgment.

Unravelling like a paranoid nightmare, Bird in a Cage melds existentialist drama with thrilling noir to tell the story of a man trapped in a prison of his own making.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Stupid decisions go hand-in-hand with horniness. Women want me, thinks the little head; men want me, thinks the woman's head, and they'll do whatever I want in hopes I'll deliver the goodies. Spoiler alert: fat chance she'll live up to her side of the bargain.

When did you last see Double Indemity? This is a careful take on that story in a French accent. I think of that statement as a compliment...if you decide to emulate something, do it carefully and well, so it raises the same admiring attention as the emulated thing. The "reasoning" behind Albert, the man in question, doing what he did is...poor. Suffice to say the crime he's involved in wouldn't've challenged Maigret, or any flic in 1961 France, too awfully much.

That said, even a good copy is a copy. So I stalled out at four stars.

Marguerite Duras, Literary Legend: Sea, Sex, Ennui

I discovered the joys of reading Marguerite Duras after I began working for John Calder at Riverrun Press in New York. It was a fabulous fringe benefit indeed.
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THE SAILOR FROM GIBRALTAR
MARGUERITE DURAS (tr. Barbara Bray)
Open Letter Books
$12.95 trade paper, available now

August 2025: 40% discount on all Open Letter titles written or translated by female-identifying artists. (Discount is applied automatically at checkout on publisher's website and applies to all hardcover, paperback, and ebook editions.)

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A young man on holiday in Italy walks out on his mistress and meets Anna - a beautiful, enigmatic woman who lives on a great white yacht. Anna is rich, and her life is entirely occupied with searching for her lover, the sailor from Gibraltar. She takes on the young man temporarily as her lover, and recounts to him the story of the sailor. The young man accompanies Anna on her search - a journey which takes them to France and Africa - even into the heart of the jungle. Slowly, love grows between them, and the sailor becomes not an impediment but an excuse which allows their love to flourish. Yet they exist in a state of suspension - for the sailor may always turn up to claim Anna.

My Review: A lush, louche, languid read about a woman who can't be bothered to make up her mind what to do with all the world's goods. A rich American, a bored French dude, a yacht, and Africa. It went straight to my head like any cocktail with too many ingredients will. The hangover was Calder's lack of desire to reprint and sell it...I wanted to tell people about how cool it was.

Give it to your COVID-addled college-age nephew to scratch the itch for adventure safely and vicariously.

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THE LITTLE HORSES OF TARQUINIA
MARGUERITE DURAS (tr. Ann Lenore Derrickson)
Out of print
$14.00 and up

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: “There are no vacations from love….”

In this careful translation from the French novel by Marguerite Duras, five Parisians spend an interminable three days of their vacations at a dreary Italian beach resort. There is nothing to do but talk, drink bitter Camparis, and contemplate (or perhaps consummate) a love affair or two. As the days wear on, they imperceptibly change some of their beliefs, from “For some time I have not liked the idea of changing the world at all costs” to “But certainly it is necessary to change the world,” concluding with “There are no vacations from love….Love, it is necessary to live it completely with its boredom and everything; there are no vacations from that.”

My Review: Not for the young. It is brutally frank and unspeakably cruel. It possesses itself of, in, a kind of soporific addictive ennui that someone who has never been in love with an other for a long time can dare to conjure, still less enact.

This is the burden of the book's refrain:

“There are no vacations from love,” he said. “That does not exist. Love, it is necessary to live it completely with its boredom and everything; there are no vacations possible for that.”
He was speaking without looking at her, facing the river.
“And that is love. To distract yourself from it, one cannot. Like life, with its beauty, its shit and its boredom.”

If that frightens you, read it; if it confuses you, don't.

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THE MALADY OF DEATH
MARGUERITE DURAS (tr. Barbara Bray)
Grove Press
$16.00 all editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A man hires a woman to spend several weeks with him by the sea. The woman is no one in particular, a “she,” a warm, moist body with a beating heart—the enigma of Other. Skilled in the mechanics of sex, he desires through her to penetrate a different mystery: he wants to learn to love. It isn’t a matter of will, she tells him. Still, he wants to try . . .

This beautifully wrought erotic novel is an extended haiku on the meaning of love, “perhaps a sudden lapse in the logic of the universe,” and its absence, “the malady of death.”

My Review: Women are the bitterest, cruelest, most reductive misogynists known to Humankind.

You say she mustn't speak, like the women of her ancestors, must yield completely to you and to your will, be entirely submissive like peasant women in the barns after the harvest when they're exhausted and let the men come to them while they're asleep. So that you may gradually get used to that shape molding itself to yours, at your mercy as nuns are at God's. And also so that little by little, as day dawns, you may be less afraid of not knowing where to put your body or at what emptiness to aim your love.

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BLUE EYES, BLACK HAIR
MARGUERITE DURAS (tr. Barbara Bray)
Out of print
various prices

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Emotionally charged, sparsely written, and vicariously compelling, Marguerite Duras's novel centers on the desire of a young man for another man he has only glimpsed once, but with whom he falls desperately in love.

My Review: To be honest, it felt to me like this was a book whose existence was not to entertain others but to codify and clarify Duras's sense of women's interchangability to men. Men LOVE and with a weird intensity in all Duras's stories of whatever stripe. But the objects of their love, their obsessive needy desperate addiction, can...shift.

All the way to gay, in this book. But what does he do, our impassioned and exquisitely aesthetic lover? He seeks and finds a woman who looks like His Man and talks about it to her.

Very, very French. And it's in a squalid, down-at-heel seaside resort. Very, very Duras.

I believe this could very easily be the most profound idea Duras ever uttered in her novels:

She says people ought to learn to live like them, with the body abandoned in a wilderness, and in the mind the memory of a single kiss, a single word, a single look to stand for a whole love.