Hunting and Gathering. Anna Gavalda [Paperback]

Anna Gavalda (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2007

Camille is doing her best to disappear. She barely eats, works at night as a cleaner and lives in a tiny attic room. Philibert Marquet de La Durbelliere is a stammering, erudite aristocrat who sells postcards outside a museum. One evening he overcomes his own excruciating reticence to rescue Camille, unconscious, from her freezing garret, and install her in the large, ornate apartment he is caretaking downstairs. He already has an unlikely flatmate, the foul-mouthed, talented working-class young chef, Franck, who is made more obnoxious by guilt about the beloved grandmother he's had to put in a home. Together, this curious, damaged little quartet may be able to face the world. Gorgeously original, full of wry humour and razor-sharp observation, redolent of Paris, its foibles, its food and its neglected corners, "Hunting and Gathering" is a universal story about despair, love and the virtues of ensemble-playing in a naughty world. It's a big novel that you will not want to put down.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Love cures all that ails the troubled trio of "no-hopers" in this sentimental second novel by French literary sensation Gavalda (Someone I Loved; I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere). Camille, a talented artist exhausted by ennui and anorexia, cleans offices at night and cowers in a shabby garret by day. Philibert, the fastidious scion of a titled family, peddles museum postcards while squatting in his dead grandmother's Parisian manse, waiting for her estate to be settled. Philibert's roommate, Franck, a talented (and womanizing) chef with ambition to burn, motorcycles once a week to look in on his stubborn, ailing grandmother Paulette, an "inmate" at a retirement home. When Philibert finds Camille deathly ill one day, he rescues her from her icy garret and deposits her in his shabby but spacious home. Franck and Camille take an immediate dislike to each other, a sure sign that they're bound to fall in love—which happens, cutely, after they liberate Paulette. That's when, "for the first time, each and every one of them felt like they belonged to a real family." Gavalda's comically implausible and comfortably predictable novel of misfits is a Gallic charmer anchored by breezy and poignant storytelling. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

This international best-seller from one of France's rising literary stars is sure to be a popular book-club choice. Although Gavalda (Someone I Loved, 2005) amps up the pathos, she delivers a winning portrait of a group of misfits who band together to form their own family. There's socially awkward aristocrat Philibert, who is living in his dead grandmother's grand if sparely furnished Parisian apartment until her will has been sorted out; his handy but uncouth roommate, Franck, a talented cook who is heartsick over having to commit his grandmother to a nursing home; and gifted artist Camille, who works cleaning offices and suffers from anorexia. When Philibert finds Camille in her freezing attic apartment exhausted from a fever, he nurses her back to health. The chef and the artist take an immediate dislike to each other and then promptly fall in love, and the three then "embark on what might turn out to be the most beautiful days of their lives." Gavalda casts her immensely appealing story in such a sunny albeit sentimental light, readers will find it nearly impossible to resist. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Vintage Books USA; New edition edition (June 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099494078
• ISBN-13: 978-0099494072
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,176,557 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful true-to-life tale, August 17, 2007

By 

Bookphile (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Hunting and Gathering (Paperback)

Hunting and Gathering is a novel where people are the story. There is no bombastic action or elaborate plotting. It is simply the tale of a group of people all suffering from our common affliction: human frailty. Significant past events are relayed by the characters in their own unadorned words and the novel is all the better for it. It has all of the beauty, all of the tentative nature and all of the base human fear and stupidity that characterize life.

My favorite character was Philibert. An unpretentious intellectual with an enormous inferiority complex, he is also the simplest and kindest of the main characters. I loved his sincere and deep-rooted sweetness and tenderness. I think Gavalda also uses him to make something of a point; that strange person that so many of us do our best to avoid may be one of the best human beings we could ever hope to meet.

Camille is nicely drawn as a woman most afraid of her own wants and needs. She can be highly irrational and irritating but she's always sympathetic because she acknowledges her own flaws and doesn't try to justify them. I loved the vivid descriptions of her drawings. Gavalda phrased them so beautifully that I could see the drawings and paintings in my mind's eye.

The character I found most surprising was Franck. He was initially so unlikable and. once again, Gavalda doesn't try to pretty up or excuse his behavior. There are reasons for it but not justifications and Franck grows a lot over the course of the novel. He's something of a foil for the other two due to his noisy and dramatic initial decline--a great contrast to the gentleness and passivity of Camille's and Philibert's.

Paulette was a rather more interesting character than I expected and a late revelation about her past paints a very detailed portrait of her as a woman.

Gavalda is a very gifted writer and the translation of her work was nicely done. I found her work to be exactly like her characters: beautiful in its simplicity. Her writing is so beautiful and her characters so real and though the work has a great deal of import, the reader never feels as though Gavalda is boasting of its import. This was a truly lovely novel.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Captivating, April 20, 2007

By 

Ying Lu (Detroit, MI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hunting and Gathering (Paperback)

Fun, captivating story about three otherwise isolated Parisians tied together sharing an apartment, who are eventually joined by one of the character's aging grandmother. Poignant insights into the basic social breakdown, and heart-warming praise forthe triumph human compassion and kindness.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quite Simply an Amazing and Remarkable Book. . ., May 26, 2008

By 

K. Caldwell (North Jersey, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hunting and Gathering (Paperback)

I don't know how else I can describe this book except to say that I disliked absolutely nothing about it. Except that it had to end.

These last few weeks have been enjoyable, and thought provoking, getting to know these strangers as they met and came together, all of them sad and yet hopeful in their own ways.

The Parisian setting had its own appeal, but that was not the story. The story was these characters, their journeys and growth. The story came alive through these characters and their ability to continue existing and enduring.

I felt happy and hopeful upon finishing their story. I'm only sad that it had to end.

Even before I started reading, I had the feeling that I would really love Hunting and Gathering. And I was right. I believe it very quickly joined the list of my all-time favorite books, one that I will gladly read again in the future.

Anna Gavalda has a great talent that truly took me by surprise, and I look forward to reading her other novel and short stories. Hunting and Gathering was a journey well taken and one I will encouragingly recommend to others.