From Publishers Weekly
Two strangers meet at a tennis club in Paris, launching this exploration into the nature of personal identity on its pleasantly erratic course. After a match, Thierry Blin, a picture framer, and Nicolas Gredzinski, a middle manager at a large corporation, hit the bar for a night of drinking, and make a bet that in three years' time they will have changed their unsatisfactory lives. That evening marks Gredzinski's first drinking binge ever and the start of his giddy spiral into alcoholism as he tries to quell the "monster of his ... anxiety" with booze. Blin switches careers-and identies-to live out his youthful fantasy, "hiding behind two words which had a magical and yet very real ring to them in his mind: private detective." With a surgically reconstructed face, Blin becomes P.I. Paul Vermeiren, and is hired to track down his now missing former self. More akin to Paul Auster's New York Trilogy than a standard crime novel, Benacquista's latest U.S. release (after Holy Smoke) offers a clever conceit.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
The author keeps up a breathless pace, touching effortlessly on identity, love, alcohol, old age, the cynicism of the business world, friendship. A great novel that would make a great film' Les Echos Someone Else won the literary prize RTL-Lire in 2002. 'A high-wire act that plays hide and seek with appearances. Benacquista is a wonderful novelist. A book to be celebrated.' Le Point 'Impeccable writing, tight rhythm, the novel offers a fresh view of the ruthless corporate world, identity and voyeurism. Humour, tenderness, despair: without doubt Benacquista's best.' L'Express
Book Description
“Breathless pace. Touches effortlessly on identity, love, alcohol, and the cynicism of the business world.”— Les Echos
Who hasn’t wanted to become “someone else”? Over a drink in Paris, two men give each other three years to see which one can more radically alter his life. Blin becomes a private detective. He takes on a new identity, even a surgically altered face. Gredzinski, a self-effacing corporate executive, discovers liquor that evening and rapidly yields to the sensuality and self-confidence induced by alcoholism. Things get complicated when Blin is hired by an ex-lover to find himself and when Gredzinski secretly follows his girlfriend to her home. A helter-skelter tale of humor and suspense.
Winner of the literary prize RTL-Lire.
About the Author
Benacquista, born in France of Italian immigrants, dropped out of film studies to finance his writing career. After being a museum night watchman, a train guard and a parasite on the Paris gallery opening and cocktail circuit, he is now a successful author and screenwriter. Her work includes Catherine Millet's explicit autobiography, 'The sexual life of Catherine M' and Beigbeder's attack novel on advertising, '£9.99'.She also translated 'Death in the Dordogne' by Louis Sanders recently favourably reviewed by the NYT.
