ANTOINE LAURAIN'S PAGE: An Astronomer in Love; Red Is My Heart; The Readers' Room

THE READERS' ROOM
ANTOINE LAURAIN (tr. Jane Aitken & Emily Boyce, Polly Mackintosh)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: When the manuscript of a debut crime novel arrives at a Parisian publishing house, everyone in the readers' room is convinced it's something special. And, when it’s eventually published, the committee for France's highest literary honour, the Prix Goncourt, agrees.

But when the shortlist is announced, there's a problem for glamorous editor Violaine Lepage: she has no idea of the author's identity. As the police begin to investigate a series of murders strangely reminiscent of those recounted in the book, Violaine is not the only one looking for answers. And, suffering memory blanks following an aeroplane accident, she's beginning to wonder what role she might play in the story – as well as how to find the mystery author before the prize is announced.

In the end it will take the combined investigative powers of a detective, a junior editor, and Violaine’s therapist to uncover the truth. They will learn not just about the author of the book, but about the story’s origins, and the novel’s strange power to exact justice for violence done to a young girl decades ago. But when everything comes to light, one question will remain: can Violaine and the other readers of the mystery manuscript put the past to rest, and find happiness in the present?

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

My Review: A fun, middlebrow light mystery about bookish people doing not-bookish things to discover the unexpected connection of writer to subject.

What worked best was the mystery of who the PoV character was before the accident that alters her. I found the brevity of the book (under 200pp) militated against it becoming fully integrated between the editor and the subject of police interest.

It's another entertaining story, albeit with less of Author Laurain's customary whimsical humor (feels odd saying that, given the main character awakes to having a chat with Proust), from France's Fredrik Backman. Laurain's comparative anonymity in the US is bewildering to me. I find his stories are pitched directly at my pleasure-read center, unlike Backman's. This cultural exploration, of a bit more serious tone, is also of a bit more serious topic: the murders, and other crimes, in the editor's manuscript received from a source unknown, coming true after the publication of the book suggests something very sinister took place. Her memory is compromised by the very public plane crash; did she ever know (despite consistently denying it) before her accident the truth of this manuscript?

It's a lot to put in a short space but this keeps the pace snappy. I was, as always, struck by Author Laurain's very unamerican way of keeping the violence and ugliness of the crimes either off the page entirely or minimally dealt with and then only in aftermath not in the commission of the crimes. I found it refreshing in a story that is not a conventional US-style cozy.

It's also not much of a mystery, in its resolution it felt rushed and obvious. So why am I giving it four stars? Because it feels like a dreamland, twilight between reality and not-reality throughout. From awakening into that chat with Proust to discovering she's got big memory-holes, the main character is off balance and so we are too. It's a way not to have our realism addiction denied by flying into the fantasy realm but not having it drag our awareness into the cleaning closet of realism there to be doused with the chlorine bleach of literalism.

I enjoy that liminality; I know others don't but always hope they'll be tempted to try something more...French, ambiguous, unbounded by rules of genre.

Can't hang me for hoping. (Yet.)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

AN ASTRONOMER IN LOVE
ANTOINE LAURAIN (tr. Louise Rogers Lalaurie & Megan Jones)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, pre-order now for delivery on 3 February 2026

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the best-selling author of The Red Notebook comes the enchanting story of two men, 250 years apart, who find themselves on separate missions to see the transit of Venus across the Sun.

In 1760, astronomer Guillaume le Gentil sets out on a quest through the oceans of India to document the transit of Venus. The weather is turbulent, the seas are rough, but his determination will conquer all.

In 2012, divorced estate agent Xavier Lemercier discovers Guillaume’s telescope in one of his properties. While looking out across the city, the telescope falls upon the window of an intriguing woman with what appears to be a zebra in her apartment.

Then the woman walks through the doors of Xavier’s office a few days later, and his life changes for evermore . . .

Part swashbuckling adventure on the high seas and part modern-day love story set in the heart of Paris, An Astronomer in Love is a time-travelling tale of adventure, destiny and the power of love.

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

My Review: Guillaume le Gentil had to feel there was a bullseye on his back and gawd was always aimimg some kind of malign force at it. Nevertheless he persisted; he accomplished more than most will in a lifetime but failed spectacularly to accomplish the fame-bringing prize of observing the Transit of Venus. He was always trying to get where he needed to be, always thwarted by stuff he could not influence or change or avoid. How to get his Transit of Venus on one of the only two chances that come in any human lifetime?

Xavier Lemercier has a void at the center of his life after his divorce. He needs a woman to fill it. His real-estate career is nothing but a way to earn a living. What he wants is what we all want, someone who really *gets* him and whom he *gets* in the same way; someone with that fit between them that is as firm and solid as a lock receiving its key. How to find this, when he's already experienced failure, when he's always doing the business of life...?

The dual timelines aren't separated by chapters, or sections, or other structural tricks. They're separated by your attention. The maguffin here is Le Gentil's telescope that comes into Lemercier's possession via a real-estate transaction. Each man hopes to see his life change through its eyepiece. And both do. Just not ever quite as expected....

Will you resonate to these men's struggles to get to their hearts' desires? I'm guessing so; you'll need to be ready to invest a lot of energy into the under-300pp of fully intertwined life stories. There's a lot going on, yet a curious lack of direct action. This is a character-driven story of accepting limitations and finding a path through them, one that enriches your Self, despite (or because of) never being direct or going the easy route.

It was a satisfying read though lighter on Laurain's whimsical humor than I myownself prefer. It felt as though I was speaking to someone I had not heard from in a while, listening as he caught me up on the unusually packed time he'd been having. It's not perfect...I mentioned it's a bit po-faced for my preference, and a wee bit more action would not come amiss...but it was a rich, mellow mug of chocolate to warm my needing innards exactly when I needed it.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

RED IS MY HEART
ANTOINE LAURAIN (tr. Jane Aitken), illus. Le Sonneur
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A moving, evocative exploration of heartbreak and healing in Paris, told through words and images in this stunning collaboration with French street artist Le Sonneur

How can you mend a broken heart? Do you write a letter to the woman who left you—and post it to an imaginary address? Buy a new watch, to reset your life? Or get rid of the jacket you wore every time you argued, because it was in some way responsible?

Combining the wry musings of a rejected lover with playful drawings in just three colours—red, black and white—one of France’s best-selling authors has collaborated with renowned street artist Le Sonneur to create a striking addition to the literature of unrequited love, and a moving, evocative exploration of heartbreak in one of the world’s great cities.

In this playful, poignant series of musings, a nameless narrator remembers a love affair just gone, watches the flight they were due to take to New York depart, sends flowers to a woman who died a century ago, smokes ostentatiously in front of No Smoking signs, and takes solace from the endless distractions and beauty of the city he calls home, Paris. If he walks these streets long enough—the streets of the City of Light, City of Love—he may find himself ready to love again.

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

My Review: This is as close as I (voluntarily) come to poetry. Reminiscent of the concrete poetry that was popular in the 1960s, this illustrated trip into the psyche of a man processing his grief at loving and losing is evocative, emotionally resonant:

I hasten to say the text isn't arranged in flowers or birds flying, more just that the illustrations are copious in number and the text flows in response to them, reminiscent to me of old-timey concrete poetry. The prose is, of necessity, spare; it is making the points the many illustrations are expanding on and evoking responses from.

I'm not the obvious reader for a melancholic, perhaps under-reflective man's internal monologue. I wanted him to have a name so I could shout it at him to get him to see what was in front of him not merely look at it. Acts of adolescent defiance like the highlighted smoking in front of a "No Smoking" sign don't seem cute to me, just...adolescent.

I'm not making a great case for you to pick it up, am I? It's down to my absence of sympathy with things poetical. If you're not so inclined either, not a read to pursue. If, on the other hand, you're amenable to blank verse with integrated illustrations that are, in my opinion, very attractive indeed, you are exactly who the book is made for.

And consider this: I really dislike poetry, and still read this book, still liked this book...Author Laurain is clearly A Talent.It's very unusual for me to do more than look at poetry and slam the book shut, chuck it into the donation pile, and forget it exists.

On that grading curve, my 3.75* looks almost like a full five.

DAVID FOENKINOS'S PAGE: THE MARTINS, his latest; & SECOND BEST, a very interior story of "missing out"

THE MARTINS
DAVID FOENKINOS (tr. Sam Taylor)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: ‘Go out into the street and the first person you see will be the subject of your next book.’

This is the challenge a struggling Parisian writer sets himself, imagining his next heroine might be the mysterious young woman who often stands smoking near his apartment...instead it’s octogenarian Madeleine. She’s happy to become the subject of his book—but first she needs to put away her shopping.

Is it really true, the writer wonders, that every life is the stuff of novels, or is his story doomed to be hopelessly banal? As he gets to know Madeleine and her family, he’ll be privy to their secrets: lost loves, marital problems and workplace worries. And he’ll soon realise he is not the impartial bystander he intended to be, but a catalyst for major changes in the lives of his characters.

Told with Foenkinos’s characteristic irony and self-deprecating humour, yet filled with warmth, The Martins is a compelling tale of the family next door which raises questions about what it means to be ‘ordinary’, and about the blurred lines between truth and fiction.

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

My Review: I don't think most Anglophone readers are aware that "Martin" is the most common surname in France. In the US, the equivalent title would be "The Johnsons," our commonest surname. The joke being established, let's look at these bog-standard, government-issue, salt of the earth just folks. (I could probably pack a few more epithets onto that sentence, but I'll resist.)

Does everyone have a novel in them? As a former literary agent who read endless forests of murdered trees invested in the attempted proof of this nostrum, I'd say, "sorta...kinda...it depends...".

In attempting to prove this is a truth not merely a truism, an author sets himself the challenge in the first paragraph of the synopsis. He tricks himself into believing today will be the day he gets to talk to the alluring woman who smokes in front of the travel agency on her breaks.

"Ha ha ha," says Melpomene, reaching past her laurel wreath for the Mask of Tragedy. Following his self-imposed rule, he must interview an old woman pushing her shopping home. As any seasoned reader knows, here comes the punchline: Mme Madeline Tricot ("Mrs. Cotton") was once in the fashion industry in a small position thus has stories about Lagerfeld et alii being horrible to each other and everyone else.

Score! Or...is it? See, Mme Tricot is sliding into dementia. Her daughter, whom he meets immediately upon going home with Mme Tricot,is naturally very protective of her mother. Thus we're launched into an exploration of modernity, celebrity "culture," and the absurdities of aging...why extend the lives of the old relentlessly and pointlessly if all you're going to do with them is ignore and/or belittle them?...through the lens of The Martins, France's any/every/body family.

Why I enjoyed the read was that Author Foenkinos commits to the bit. He keeps our narrator saying he's reporting alone while, in fact, he's embroiled with the Martins. As a nod to his disingenuous self deletion while in fact performing self insertion, Foenkinos peppers the text with authorial footnotes explaining, justifying, in short intellectualizing, our narrator's many choices. Foenkinos treats us to the narrator's rocky relationships with the people he's trying to make into The Martins, his characters; we read the narrator's account of being termed a con man and an emotional vampire, accusations he, reluctantly, acknowledges carry some truth in their hurtful rejection.

Changing from novel, to non-fiction, to memoir, to metafiction in turns, The Martins is a charming and entertaining exploration of the overlooked, the unconsidered, the devalued, as full and satisfying subjects for our attention. It thus shines a searchlight on the tendency of modern storytelling to ignore simpleness in favor of simplicity. Making their own lives easier by inventing Big!Important!Amazing! people whose lives and doings have only the depth of a narrative purpose, Foenkinos implicitly accuses himself and other authors of avoiding the incredible richness with its immense labor of La Comédie humaine, to cite an ancient example. We're ever less likely to get to know, really know, the people around us, even our own family members as this novel quite clearly demonstrates.

It lends this entertaining read a special poignance, and makes the only slightly veiled warning to our distracted selves sting a good bit more. Multilayered meditation on storytelling, stories, the tragedy and comedy of ordinariness, and the need to attend the moment you're in: A very twenty-first century kind of a read. One I recommend to almost everyone except those in the throes of divorce or breakup, or the recently bereaved.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SECOND BEST
DAVID FOENKINOS (tr. Megan Jones)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A witty, moving international bestseller about a 10-year boy whose life is shaped forever when he loses out on the role of Harry Potter.

It's 1999. Martin Hill is 10 years old, crazy about football and has a minor crush on a girl named Betty. Then he makes it to the final 2 in the casting for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

In the end, the other boy is picked for the role of a lifetime. A devastated Martin tries to move on with his life. But how can he escape his failure, especially when it's the most famous film series in the world? As Martin grows up, he finds every aspect of his life is invaded with a sense of failure and missed opportunity, and he struggles under the weight of the life he isn’t living.

This bittersweet comedy is full of surprising truths and touching moments, as its unforgettable character discovers that sometimes, the lives we wish we’d led might not be all they’re cracked up to be.

An international publishing sensation, Second Best has been adapted for stage and won the hearts of hundreds of thousands of readers.

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

My Review: Published in 2022 in its original French and brought out this week by Pushkin Press after their acqusition of Gallic Books, this is a wonderful meditation on the idea of "almost" as it defines us. Our Western culture valorizes "winning," defined as gaining an objective, fulfilling a need to see ourselves in those who exceed or transcend averageness, mediocrity; this is invidious. By definition, there are more who do not "succeed" or "excel" than those who do; the bar moves ever farther from the mass in the middle, and we are subtextually told we're not as good as, as deserving as, as successful as the few that excel.

Capitalism 101 there...create scarcity from abundance, then keep the abundance away from the maximum number of people.

Being on the outside of the circle, then being uprooted from the normalcy of his life before tragedy of s familial sort scars him further, Martin is a kid who's asked to bear social burdens way above his paygrade. Similar circumstances have crushed adults (famously Pete Best, though the comparison is unfair and inexact) into tailspins more intense than Martin's. Adolescence is hard enough...putting this on top...well, it's no wonder Martin begins to fanatically and fearfully avoid the cultural juggernaut that was Pottermania.

Not terribly successful, that. With the expected consequences.

Watching a talented, not exceptional, adolescent fall into psychosis was uncomfortable to read. Martin imagines...carefully note verb choice...people are laughing at him, judging him, thinking of him as second best, because this epic piece of bad luck befell him. This is, to an adult, clearly imaginary; also clearly missing that most painful of adolescent lacks: Perspective. Watching Martin stumble and bumble his way through what could have been a very good career indeed turned into a prison of self-doubt and fantasy...well...it's rough for me as a reader to soldier on, resonating as I do to his terrible, ongoing struggle. Reading the rumination, by definition repetitive, of someone caught in their mind's cruelest trap...what might have been...is, no matter how brief (only 200-ish pages), quite an ask for entertainment.

Author Foenkinos was inspired to write this story by an interview with the film in question's casting director who recounted the process of anointing Daniel Radcliffe as Potter in contrast to another boy who didn't have some quality Radcliffe did. I do not know if that other child was ever named in any other venue. I certainly hope not. Bad enough to lose out; worse to be known as the loser. The story moves at a slow pace because rumination is not susceptible to the plot drivers that keep us flipping pages. It is an interior novel, this, one that says "here we are in this head and here we stay" which isn't quite the same thing as a récit, but really closely related. In both there is a relentless inward gaze. It gets wearing.

That this would make a very interesting French film is undeniable; it's purported to have been adapted to the stage, though I can't find any official source that mentions this. I can barely imagine how Foenkinos is getting away with mentioning Potter at all without The Lawyers℠ being all over him like vultures on a gut-cart for not paying Warner Bros. a cut. (Maybe he is; I kinda doubt it.)

What I found troubling is the way this examination of fame culture was presented in its downside was pointed but never pointed out. I'm not sanguine about the readers attracted to the story getting a sense of resolution from the ending. It's why I'm only offering four stars for a five-star idea.