Customer Reviews

Voice Over: A Novel (French Voices (Seven Stories Press))

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"Voice Over" is a compelling and unique novel. The story follows a never-named woman in almost a stream of consciousness style, sometimes ambling along, sometimes racing, heading down a blind alley here and circling through a detour there. At first, this is unsettling, but the effect is to create in the reader the same confusion and conflict the woman herself is experiencing. The title references both the voice-over that every person uses, that inner dialogue with which we narrate our lives to ourselves, examining and explaining our own actions and intentions and interpreting the responses and intentions of others, and which the main character reveals throughout the book; and the character's job as a train announcer, where she is the "voice over" announcing the trains' comings and goings. The job is very much like her life: carried out in private, yet entirely public as her disembodied voice guides travelers to destinations she's never seen.

The central character is both randomly victimized by life and the engineer of her own victimization. She is obsessed with a man who belongs to someone else and virtually stalks him. He appears to have little interest in her, and in her despair and loneliness, she allows - in fact, encourages - exploitation by everyone from a nightclub transsexual who forces her into his act to a politician who mistakes her for a prostitute; an easy mistake, since he attended a dinner party where she claimed to be one. Meanwhile, she fantasizes about the unobtainable man and waits for his love to rescue her. Just when the reader is becoming convinced that she is completely unbalanced, he begins to return her affection.

What's most interesting about this book is how we both observe and share the main character's point of view, adding another layer of "voice over" to the story. We feel the precarious balance she maintains. We fear for her reckless lifestyle and unrealistic pursuit of the man she cannot have, and are embarrassed for her failure to read people correctly and modify her responses accordingly. More than once, her inner voice mirrored my own, causing me to flinch and examine my own thinking and assumptions.

If you like your books action-packed and plot-driven, this one is not for you. But if you want a character study that will make you begin to question and rethink your own narration and interpretation of the events that govern your life, and you enjoy watching a writer do something completely unique with a story, you will be as fascinated by "Voice Over" as I was.

An extraordinary novel with a voice so penetratingly intimate that it will make you shiver. There are descriptions of everyday life - of what it feels like to have a cold, to be frightened, to be drunk, to be in love - that are so preternaturally precise that I am not sure I will ever forget them. This is not another romantic novel, though it is deeply romantic. This is a small masterpiece.

A drunken, almost accidental kiss gives life to the obsession of the heroine of this engaging, intense novel. She is unnamed and the story, like a voice over to a film, is told, in the third person, from her point of view. She had been obsessed with this man for some time, and the kiss is just what she needs to bring hope to her fantasies. He is involved in a serious relationship with another woman who is a foil for the central character, everything she is not, self assured, glibly interacting with others, sure of her self on the social scene. The heroine is at sea when it comes to relationships with other people. Her assignations, mostly with strangers, are as if she is in a dreamlike state and is compelled to submit to the others' desires, although she draws the line when one of them wants to tie her up.

The atmosphere of the novel is tense as you wait for the heroine to be driven over the edge. She works as an announcer at Gar de Nord, a Paris train station, a disembodied voice, blandly relating to the travelers the time and track of departure of their trains, a voice over for them. It is the perfect job for her, detached, unemotional, distant, somewhere where she can be safe.

The heroine hides a traumatic event from her childhood. One gets the sense that this incident has driven her entire life. It is so shameful and embarrassing for her that the one time she told someone about it, her best friend, it spelled the end of their relationship. She could not bear to have contact with her any more.

Her isolation from the world around her becomes extreme by the end of the book. Nonetheless, she achieves a resolution of her conflicts that allows her to continue on with a spark of hope.

Experiencing the heroine's trials and tribulations is at times disturbing, but the author has built a compelling character, more than one dimensional despite her obsession. She is able to convey the heroine's intense compulsion for her `lover' without making her seem distastefully manic. I recommend this novel highly, although readers who are looking for something light and airy will be sorely disappointed.

Celine Curiol's first novel is original and haunting. Written in a third person narrative, the novel tells the story of a young French woman, obsessed with an already attached man. Working as an announcer in the train station, the woman spends the novel aimlessly wandering the city, having chance encounters with strange men and anxiously awaiting a phone call from the man.

Similar to classic stories such as The Awakening or the Yellow Wallpaper, the novel tells a convincing story of a woman driven almost to insanity by a man. The writing is fresh and original, a story that could be read by future generations in a feminist literature class. However, the lack of chapters, and third person narrative can cause the novel to drag a bit towards the middle. If you are looking for a light read, this novel may not be what you are looking for.