From Publishers Weekly
In 1994, Nebraska released Redonnet's triptych (Hotel Splendid, Forever Valley and Rose Mellie Rose); in 1995, Candy Story; and this year, Nevermore, the last of the five short novels currently available by the French writer. They are all very much of a piece: claustrophobic, timeless, usually set in some slightly surreal, always seedy place (a hotel in a swamp; a corrupt seaside resort). Here these settings are the Fuch Circus and the Babylon nightclub in San Rosa, a vaguely frontier-Western town gone to pot and haunted by nearby sinister "camps" where the prodigal deputy, Willy Bost, lost both parents. The Babylon and the Fuch Circus are sites for murders, intrigues and secrets revealed, and there is an appropriately freakish cast of characters?the evil nightclub owner, Cassy Mac Key, and her mute, dwarf sidekick; the new chanteuse; Nina, the wise Fat Lady; Goppy, the hunchback; and Lizzie Malik, the one-time acrobat whose career was ended by a sawed-through rope. There's some grizzly sex, but there's also a love story that ends well and a corrupt political race that does not. But mostly there's Redonnet's writing. Wry and darkly detached, it's like a good French noir film?the cutting, the angles and especially the shadows can make it hard to follow, but they also make it undeniably and eerily evocative.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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From Library Journal
The characters and places in this slender, taut French novel are vaguely familiar and American-sounding. Willy Bost, a mirthless functionary with an irrepressible sexual desire and a past he cannot face, is transferred by High Places to San Rosa, a "west coast" town "on the border," known for its volcano. Willy Bost is clueless of the rat's nest he has fallen into: The town's best real estate is controlled by the omnivorous Gobbs, and President Hardley, who frequents the sinister Babylon club, run by the mysterious former owner of the legendary Fuch Circus, Dora Atter, has been murdered in the pissotiere. San Rosa is a petri dish of self-interest. Yet in the end there is redemption through violent death and love. Redonnet's poetry, plays, and novels, most recently Candy Story (Univ. of Nebraska Pr., 1995), are not well known in America, though this work combining her trademark restraint with backhanded humor a la Beckett will surely win new fans. Another excellent translation by Stump; for literature collections.?Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
