My Friends

Bove's tale of a World War I veteran living in postwar Paris, searching for friendship and warmth, is an ironic, entertaining masterpiece by one of France's favorite authors.

Emmanuel Bove was discovered by Colette in the 1923, and other admirers of his work include Samuel Beckett, Wim Wenders, and John Ashbery. My Friends is Bove's first and most famous book, and it begins simply, although unusually, enough: "When I wake up, my mouth is open. My teeth are furry: it would be better to brush them in the evening, but I am never brave enough." Victor Baton is speaking, and he is a classic little man, of no talent or distinction or importance and with no illusions that he has any of those things, either; in fact, if he is exceptional, it is that life's most basic transactions seem to confound him more than they do the rest of us. All Victor wants is to be loved, all he wants is a friend, and as he strays through the streets of Paris in search of them we laugh both at Victor's meekness and his odd pride, but we feel with him, too. Victor is after all a kind of everyman, the indomitable knight of human fragility. And, in spite of everything, he, or at least his creator, is some kind of genius, investing the backstreets and rented rooms of the city and the unsorted moments of daily life with a weird and unforgettable clarity.