- Paperback: 220 pages
- Publisher: Cormorant Books Inc. (Feb 28 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1896951961
- ISBN-13: 978-1896951966
- Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 11.9 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 136 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #268,631 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
The spare plot of The Perfect Circle is a simple love story simply told. Translated from the French, this finalist for the Giller Prize reveals its richness in the intimate view it provides of a lakeside Italian village in Tuscany. Marianne, from Montreal, has fallen in love with Marco, a sometime plumber and hunter of birds who is in love with his three dogs. Marco, however, can never escape from his mama's cooking, which keeps him tied to the village and its traditional ways. Although he is a modern man, his self-absorption and his strong ties to his easy-going village life cause Marianne endless pain. At times, the writing is highly lyrical and cerebral, focusing on Marianne's emotional obsessions and her inability to deal with Marco's distance and her own loneliness. Ultimately she nearly drives herself to suicide because she is "unable to leave and unable to stay." A highlight of the novel comes when Marianne takes a job as a waitress in a busy local restaurant. The sympathetic portraits of her co-workers are engaging and real. This novel takes flight when it comes down to earth and reveals the concrete realities of village life in Tuscany. --Mark Frutkin
Book Description
Marianne, a young Montrealer, has come to live in Tuscany to draw and write and examine her life. Here she meets Marco, a temptingly seductive man who still lives in his mother's house in the village and who's not prepared to commit himself to anything resembling a shared life. Though he breaks her heart, again and again, Marianne can only avoid him by returning to Canada. This first novel by Pascale Quiviger is marked by its luminous language and its unstinting look at what makes Marianne, and Marco, and, indeed, an entire village and the world beyond it, tick. The Perfect Circle is the winner of the 2004 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction (French language).
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
familiar story set to music,
By Serendipity (Toronto) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Perfect Circle (Paperback)
This is not a quick read, it's not one for the subway or your lunch break, but it is one for delving and imagining and running off to Italy with.It opens with a passage in the second person, never easy to read at the best of times but hang in there, it tells the unnamed narrator's story in a nutshell, a very sad, lonely nutshell, and sets the premise for the rest of the story: to tell the story with names changed, to create some distance perhaps, or to handle the emotions and learn from them. It has an autobiographical feel but that's simply the author's skill. The rest of the novel tells the story as fiction, with Marianne meeting and falling in love with Marco, going back to Montreal and then borrowing money to fly to Italy again as soon as Marco invites her. He lives in a small village by a lake where two tourists drown every year, where everyone fishes. He owns the terrace house he grew up in but doesn't live there, leaving it empty while he eats and sleeps at his mother's house next door. The entire street is inhabited by his family, with aunts all around. Marianne is not exactly welcomed. They like to talk about her, but not to her. She has the same conversation over and over again: "Are you German?" "No, I'm Canadian" "Oh, Marco's girlfriend." She wrestles with his mother for the right to cook for him, but can't please either of them. While Marco, a plumber, drives off early in the morning to do his thing, Marianne spends lonely days drawing or walking by the lake, until eventually she takes a horribly underpaid waitressing job at a busy restuarant. This is one of those books that has to be read more than once to fully grasp, understand and appreciate every word. The writing style is like poetry and philosophy, not always easy to follow, revealing so much in precise movements. This is one of those fine examples of writing as art, or music, and you cannot help but be right there with Marianne as she experiences something so familiar yet so bitter. And it is a familiar story, sadly so, yet the ending justifies the whole ordeal as Marianne grows and faces the truth. Marco is a sad character, content with his life, not willing to change, unreachable in the most important ways. He too is familiar, as is his mother, never mind that they are Italian - it just shows how similiar we all can be.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perfectly Obsessed With Reading Pascale,
By
This review is from: The Perfect Circle (Paperback)
"If you watch my hand move through space, you willrealize that it's trying to find you. Already it's been searching for a long time, even longer perhaps. Touching you, it would say: I'm looking for you. it would say: I haven't stopped loving you. And it would say: I had to break out your perfect circle." That's why I am so obsessed reading Pascale. I don't have any problem with dust when I am reading but I can't stop having allergy like symptoms when I was reading you. Well written. Comes from the bottom of the one's heart.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Shining, Brilliant (in parts),
By Reader and Writer "Chris" (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Perfect Circle (Paperback)
At times there is writing here to take your breath away. The first part is a gem of prose. You read that and immediately know why it was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. When people talk of freewriting, they mean this -- it spins across and through the human mind and soul -- it alights and moves on, building toward a true moving experience. Unfortunately it doesn't ring as solidly through the entire book. The plot is the main problem, she keeps rushing back to Canada back to Europe back to Canada back to Europe and we get a bit dizzy wondering why the author felt such a need to do this. But as the childhood poem says, when she was good she was very very good.
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