From Library Journal
In this first-person narrative, 40-year-old Parisian teacher Pierre Forgue recounts his painful, obsessive affair with a sadistic younger man, Daniel Carbon or "Duck." As Forgue describes his passive life, dismal surroundings, and damaging relationship, he suggests that there is no hope for love or meaning in the world. Navarre uses post-modernist techniques: stream-of-consciousness point of view, self-reflexivity, attention to minute realistic detail, and minimal action and character development. For this reason the book would have little appeal for general readers, but libraries with large contemporary European fiction collections might wish to purchase this well-translated work by a popular French writer. Elizabeth Guiney Sandvick, English Dept., North Hennepin Community Coll., Minneapolis
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Review
"A universally appealing tale about the difficulty of finding and keeping relationships." --
Newsday 1-29-89"It's not a matter of what's written, reproduction of the real, not very realistic, all things considered, and which shows too much, but of writing, a reality itself. To draw with words." In this brief passage, from a story nested within the story like the Chinese boxes of childhood, Yves Navarre defines his approach to the novel as a literary form. A reminiscence that is not quite a diary, an open-ended discussion that circles around and around the possibility of love, Our Share of Time is a moving and sometimes painful account of the human search for the undefinable ..Other." Pierre Forgue is a schoolteacher writing his life as he lives it. Painstakingly accurate in his portrayal of day to day events, he records everything that happens to him: what he thinks as he moves through established routines and rituals, how his friends react to him, what he feels as he makes love. Into this closed world comes an intruder, the elusive Duck, a handsome and mysterious young man who causes Forgue both joy and pain. An object of affection as well as indifference, Duck provides a focus for Forgue's loneliness. Their relationship becomes a macabre ballet, Forgue fleeing to his summer home, Duck running away to the exotic East, both men seeking relief in unattainable ideals. In the end they find that they only have each other, a solution that is not acceptable to either of them. As FoTgue writes, "We are all here hunting each other, as much in what we are as in and through what we create. We seek out the exceptional, power or death, power and death, to the ultimate degree, together, if it's possible... We have conquered nothing and we are alive." And ultimately alone. Our Share of Time is a perfect work in the same way that a Fassbinder film is perfect: The experience is total, involving all the senses. and so breathtakingly correct in every detail that the audience becomes not an objective observer but an interactive participant in the drama. Navarre's skill as a writer, his grasp of both form and content, is unparalleled in contemporary fiction. Graphic and incredibly honest, Our Share of Time is without a doubt one of the ten best books to be published in the last twenty-five years. --
From Independent Publisher"Our Share of Time rightly suggests that 'our efforts to bring things within our grasp, within our expectations' destroy us and yet, at the same time, define us as human. The novel poses ultimate questions; it is a searing, soaring exploration of the way we are." --
Hollins Critic 10-87"The novel [possesses] a hip grace and an urban ambiance that's been compared with Breakfast at Tiffany's. . . . Anyone interested in romance will find part of themselves in this fresh and subtly evocative novel." --
Minnesota Daily 11-1-89"Yves Navarre is a lively and thought-provoking writer, and Our Share of Time, the third of his novels to appear in English, deserves a large readership in America." --
Washington Times 4-20-87
