Customer Reviews

The Scapegoat

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A delightful family, where it is impossible to have a boring day; a wonderful prose and the excuse of a couple of murders to make things more entertaining; I dare you to read ONLY one of the stories of Benjamin, Julie, Claire, Therese, Jeremy, Loubna, the Queen Zabo and the rest of the Malaussene tribe. You won't stop until you'll read them all.

Written like a crazy tale about the crazy life of a generous and violent and heterogenous set of communities living together in a Paris district.

Daniel Pennac saved my sanity. I once believed that I did not like French litterature as a whole, too heavy, too deep, but "The Scapegoat" changed all of this. It is at once deliriously crazy, familiar and smart! A very, very good read.

Someone is committing gruesome murders of senior citizens in a Paris department store. Sounds depressing? Not under the nimble prose of Daniel Pennac. Meet Benjamin Malausene, professional scapegoat at the above mentioned department store, and his horde of younger siblings. They are a family blessed/cursed with unusual talents that seem make them magnets for the bizare and the weird. Using the high concept jargon of the film industry, you could say "Tom Robbins meets Gabriel Garcia Marquez."

Regrettably, the essence of what could have been a very interesting French crime novel is bastardized by this unfortunate Anglicized translation, resulting in an adequate, if somewhat haphazard read. Translation is a very tricky business, fraught with pitfalls, and the decision in this case to use British colloquialisms is a total failure (albeit more so for the American reader than the British one). To have uniquely British turns of phrase and slang emerging from what are supposed to be French characters severely detracts from the reader's ability to immerse himself in the book. That said, the story, about a department store employee, and the bombs that keep going off in his store, isn't bad. He and his family are the most interesting and entertaining bits of the book. The actual "mystery" relies on some very disturbing pathology, which I don't find particularly interesting or plausible in general, and the "mystery" as to how the bombs are getting into the store will be apparent to most readers very early on.

the book arrived earlier than it was supposed to and it was in good shape as promised

This series of "mystery" novels is great fun! They bring to life the Belleville/Menilmontant quarter of Paris with hip, fast-paced prose and plenty of slang. The setting, characters, and philosophizing is ultimately more interesting than what is supposed to be a "mystery," but that doesn't detract from the read. Unfortunately, the translation is laughably bad, putting British slang into the French characters' mouths! Still, this a funky---and very French---series.