Customer Reviews

Noir: A Novel

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This is a great novel that could be made into a great film. Pauvert has woven a terrific story that never seems to fully emerge from the dark. The broader picture has been cleared, but ultimate percipience remains in shadow.

France has devolved into a totalitarian state that suppresses racial minorities and rules the white majority with a quick iron fist; who is behind this and what is the goal? The book reveals little, as those in control might not even know. Bits and pieces of the main characters life come to light; what and who he has become after he is charged with murder reveals disturbing aspects of the new France and about his existence. Traveling from south France to Paris to Bordeaux, the story unfolds revealing a future France, similar to the present but, stagnant, controlling, secretive, dark.

I enjoyed how Pauvert moves the book across all of France, creating great depth and breadth (I followed the travels using Google Earth, from city to city). I also enjoyed Pauvert's obvious love of motorcycles, which allows the main character moments of freedom and simply joy, in stark contrast to his actuality. The reader is left with a greater understanding of what has taken place and how France (and perhaps the whole rest of the world) has come to it's new form. But, like "1984" and "Brave New World" (or the film Brazil), don't expect redemption and a happy ending for the protagonist...the world has changed.

In 2019 France, he is arrested when he is found by the body of a murder victim. The transport crashes leaving him dazed and frightened to wander the streets of Paris wondering who he is and did he do what the only seeming memory he has. Could he be a murderer as his only vision is that of a brutalized woman's corpse?

He manages to get home, but his wife fears him and worse when he looks in a mirror he fails to recognize the image looking back. No one seems to want to help him; in fact they prefer to turn him over to the cops. The secret police of the ruling French National party search for him even as he learns he has a dark power to stare into someone's eyes until they die. African immigrants take him to the outlawed Noir who help him obtain the truth behind the woman's murder and give him a reason to live: kill the leader of the French National Party.

This grim dark near futuristic thriller modernizes melds and extrapolates 1984 with THE STRANGER into a dystopian 2019. The nameless lead character struggles for understanding in a society totally owned by the party through the use of electronic gizmos and drug control of its citizens. Readers who appreciate a foreboding gloomy suspense saga will appreciate the cat and mouse French morality tale in which fascism rules.

Harriet Klausner

I gave this book a chance...I got an email from Amazon about the best thrillers/mystery books and this was on there. The premise seemed interesting enough, but this book was a total bore. Maybe it's just me, but it seemed that for all it's schizophrenic scene changing, murders in grisly detail (or totally skimmed over in a few instances), this book was uninteresting. I get it, it's French, so I expected it to be weird, it's been compared to The Stranger, so I shouldn't have expected it to really redeem itself... but can't I have some expectations for a good novel?

I guess the fact that the book is thoroughly French explains a lot of it's failings (in my opinion).

As for the ending...well...you won't finish this with a sense of conclusion or optimism. This is much more of a "huh?" finish than anything. Unless you love Albert Camus, or your novels dark, disturbing, depressing and dull, I would skip this one. It may have won an award in France for best first novel, but given that the author is a pharmacist, the book is about as gripping as his profession.