It has been two years since Rose, Paul’s wife, disappeared. For two years Paul has been waiting for her to come back, rereading the few letters she sends him (but is it really Rose who wrote them?). The most recent one was posted from China. Paul decides to go looking for her. In the meantime, he listens to his favourite records (Lou Reed, Stevie Wonder), quarrels with Lothar, his twin brother, falls in love with Alma, his sister-in-law, and silently hurls insults at Donald Trump, “The Man with Satchel-Leather Skin”, whose absurd pronouncements he follows day after day. On leave from the hospital where he works, he eventually goes back to his job and finds himself treating a patient with an extremely rare heart condition, Brugada syndrome. But it is in Barcelona that his fate will finally be sealed.
How do we stay faithful to those we have loved? And how do we “keep standing to the very end”? Astride his 736 cc Royal Enfield Interceptor, Paul speeds along the road back to Toulouse. It is February 26. The radio announces that the war has begun.
With this rich and teeming new novel, Jean-Paul Dubois recaptures the storytelling verve of A French Life and sets his favourite hero on the road to a possible redemption.
