Virginie Despentes

Wow she did it! Virginie Despentes brings her story of urban life; Parisien style to a suitable climax; in this the final part of the trilogy. The Christ like figure of Vernon Subutex who communicates only through his presence and his work at the mixing desk manages to become a cult figure for future generations. However this is not a novel about the future, but about contemporary life in Paris France.

In Tome 1 we met Vernon just as his life was changed by the death of a famous french show more chanteur Alex Bleach. Vernon managed a record/disc shop in town, but also worked in some capacity looking after the wayward pop star. When Alex died maybe from an overdose, but under suspicious circumstances he left Vernon three cassettes. Vernon found himself suddenly homeless and the lease had expired on his record shop. He had plenty of hangers on in his shop and managed to lodge with some of them for a while, but when favours ran out he found himself living on the streets of Paris. A film producer connected to the criminal underworld sets out to steal the cassettes and a journalist is putting together a biography of Alex Bleach and a search is on to track down Vernon who at the end of Tome 1 suffers a vicious beating.

Tome 2 finds Vernon at deaths door, but he manages to find somewhere in one of the Parisien Parks to heal. He is befriended by a couple of other homeless people in the park and then by staff of a restaurant that backs onto the park. Vernon's suffering has resulted in him being an ethereal like figure, but gradually more people gather around his makeshift home including some of the people who frequented his record shop and or knew Alex Bleach. The violent incident in this book does not involve Vernon, but the film producer is assaulted in his home by two of Vernon's female camp followers. Vernon is talked into running disco nights at the restaurant which soon become popular. His followers arrange for out of town "convergences" rave like events with Vernon mixing the music.

At the start of Tome 3 Vernon's rave events are turning into gatherings of like minded people. Some of the old crowd are with him, but he is attracting new people. They bliss out at the drug and alcohol free events dancing the weekend away to Vernon's mixing of the music. A follower of Vernon dies leaving Vernon a considerable sum of money. The close knit group around the DJ cannot decide what to do with it and when Vernon suggests they make a zombie film using the actresses from the porn industry that are part of his group, nobody is enthusiastic and the idea of getting hold of the money breaks up the circle. Vernon goes off with his latest girlfriend/manager earning a living as a DJ for hire. It is 2015 the year of the Bataclan terrorist attack in Paris. There is also a violent incident in the circle that had gathered around Vernon. He drifts back to Paris.................

Vernon is sometimes a catalyst, but more often a sort of cipher, a hollowness at the centre of this group, that whirl around him. Despentes uses the back stories of her characters to raise issues about modern life, with Paris as the contemporary backdrop. Racism, homelessness, prostitution, violence, politics, religion, criminality, terrorism, immigration, relationships and gender awareness are all subjects raised and experienced by the characters that people the book. Vernon has no views on any of this, letting everything happen to him, while he concerns himself with making lists of music to play. The introduction of new characters and the development of their lives, their views and interactions are used by Despentes to paint a vivid picture of issues facing characters living on the fringe of urban society. The hollow centre of the book works, because Despentes is looking to examine the figures, motifs, developments and myths around the periphery. I wondered if Despentes would be able, somehow bring this all together in this final book; she does triumphantly. I rate this novel at 5 stars. show less

Apocalypse bébé is set up as a fairly straightforward crime story - the narrator, Lucie Tolédo, is a plodding private detective who finds herself out of her depth when Valentine, the teenage subject of a routine surveillance job, suddenly goes missing. To help find her, she enlists a legendary Big Scary Lesbian Detective known in the trade as "La Hyène", happily switching to the Dr Watson role for herself.

Lucie's first-person narrative, with its noir affectation of detachment and show more superficiality, is intercut with third-person chapters from the point of view of other characters in the story, where we bore down at leisure into the depths of their personalities, with an airy disregard for the strict timekeeping requirements that normally apply to crime fiction. And we get to see the author's supreme contempt for just about everybody: Valentine's bourgeois novelist father, her dim but well-meaning stepmother, her beautiful but vain and selfish birth-mother, her pointlessly aggressive Muslim cousin, the various people on the right and left who try to take advantage of her whilst pretending to help. Even the superb Hyène turns out to have an untouchable dark spot in her background. And, just before it happens, we realise that all this bad stuff is piling up on top of a fifteen-year-old girl who, remarkable though she is, isn't in the least equipped to deal with it. And something really bad is going to happen as a result.

The very black message of the plot is, however, destabilised in turn by the lively rhythms of Despentes's prose, which turn the flatfooted profanities and clichés of street French into something that feels incongruously subversive and funny. As long as humans can turn a handful of words into a gesture of rebellion, we are meant to feel, all hope for our society can't be entirely lost. show less

Vernon Subutex Vols 1 & 2 by Virginie Despentes

If you know nothing Virginie Despentes it is because of the celebrity focussed US-centric shallow culture we live in and is not due to any lack of ability on her part.

These books are translated from the French with enough essence left in that you can still smell the coffee and sewers of Paris.

This story revolves around a group of people who were once young, beautiful, hip and riding the wave of their times. Now, however, they find themselves show more middle aged and in various stages of coming to terms (or not) with no longer being those same young things they once were. Some have had an easy ride and some have not. Nearly all of them have followed paths diverging from what they were when they were young. None if them planned on that being the case.

What brings them together is Vernon Subutex.

Once a record store owner and a very cool dude he is now living from hand to mouth barely making ends meet. One of his long time friends, an ageing rock star visits him and they do a mammoth session of drinks and drugs. Vernon passes out and while unconscious his friend records a long confession about his life using Vernon’s video gear. Within days the ageing rock star is dead and the nation mourns and everyone remembers when they were young.

Also within days Vernon’s landlord has decided he can make more money without his existing tenants and Vernon finds himself evicted from his apartment, he leaves with nothing more than a backpack and the tapes. He leaves the tapes with a friend and without any kind of support he sinks lower and lower into seen/not seen world of homelessness .

Meanwhile, the rumour of the existence of the confession tapes causes things to happen. The ageing rock star knew some secrets that others thought it would be better left unsaid.

The makings of a whodunnit/chase scenario? You’d think so but it doesn’t pan out like that. While Vernon sinks lower and lower in the social strata he becomes sought after by those who were once his friends. Yes, it is about the tapes and what may or may not be on them but it’s more than that too.

That’s enough plot to give you the framework that all this hangs on but that is all it is, a framework.

The real story is multifaceted and many layered. It details Vernon’s descent into homelessness and abject poverty in such realistic detail that you realise that without too many changes it could happen to you in the not too distant future. But this is not a story of social inequality. It is about transformation.

Over the two books that I read, every character in this story is on some kind of journey towards openness, forgiveness, understanding, revenge, death and more. All these separate stories meld in the search for Vernon Subutex and yes, even the French think it’s a weird name.

Vernon’s previous life as a record store owner gives a musical underscoring to this whole story and others’ individual stories too, like the neo-nazi losing his inhibition and dancing with the pornstar of his dreams after having confessed to nearly killing one of the main characters of the books. Sounds highly unlikely but actually sits well in the framework of this mini saga.

The main characters have enough depth to be believable even though not always likeable. There is a lovely flow to this story and the soundtrack may strike a chord.

Virginie Despentes captures so much in this story, the way that no-one is ever prepared for middle age, the way that we become people we do not recognise in both good and bad ways, the sheer harsh and unforgiving nature of ageing and how we always see ourselves as young and how these conflicting things can produce unforeseen results.

It appears that Vol 3 is not available on the kindle and I could not find it in other channels either which is a real shame as I’d like to know how the whole story ends. Vol 2 ends with the main characters doing something completely different and Vernon transforming into something wholly bigger. show less

Vernon Subutex Vols 1 & 2 by Virginie Despentes

If you know nothing Virginie Despentes it is because of the celebrity focussed US-centric shallow culture we live in and is not due to any lack of ability on her part.

These books are translated from the French with enough essence left in that you can still smell the coffee and sewers of Paris.

This story revolves around a group of people who were once young, beautiful, hip and riding the wave of their times. Now, however, they find themselves show more middle aged and in various stages of coming to terms (or not) with no longer being those same young things they once were. Some have had an easy ride and some have not. Nearly all of them have followed paths diverging from what they were when they were young. None if them planned on that being the case.

What brings them together is Vernon Subutex.

Once a record store owner and a very cool dude he is now living from hand to mouth barely making ends meet. One of his long time friends, an ageing rock star visits him and they do a mammoth session of drinks and drugs. Vernon passes out and while unconscious his friend records a long confession about his life using Vernon’s video gear. Within days the ageing rock star is dead and the nation mourns and everyone remembers when they were young.

Also within days Vernon’s landlord has decided he can make more money without his existing tenants and Vernon finds himself evicted from his apartment, he leaves with nothing more than a backpack and the tapes. He leaves the tapes with a friend and without any kind of support he sinks lower and lower into seen/not seen world of homelessness .

Meanwhile, the rumour of the existence of the confession tapes causes things to happen. The ageing rock star knew some secrets that others thought it would be better left unsaid.

The makings of a whodunnit/chase scenario? You’d think so but it doesn’t pan out like that. While Vernon sinks lower and lower in the social strata he becomes sought after by those who were once his friends. Yes, it is about the tapes and what may or may not be on them but it’s more than that too.

That’s enough plot to give you the framework that all this hangs on but that is all it is, a framework.

The real story is multifaceted and many layered. It details Vernon’s descent into homelessness and abject poverty in such realistic detail that you realise that without too many changes it could happen to you in the not too distant future. But this is not a story of social inequality. It is about transformation.

Over the two books that I read, every character in this story is on some kind of journey towards openness, forgiveness, understanding, revenge, death and more. All these separate stories meld in the search for Vernon Subutex and yes, even the French think it’s a weird name.

Vernon’s previous life as a record store owner gives a musical underscoring to this whole story and others’ individual stories too, like the neo-nazi losing his inhibition and dancing with the pornstar of his dreams after having confessed to nearly killing one of the main characters of the books. Sounds highly unlikely but actually sits well in the framework of this mini saga.

The main characters have enough depth to be believable even though not always likeable. There is a lovely flow to this story and the soundtrack may strike a chord.

Virginie Despentes captures so much in this story, the way that no-one is ever prepared for middle age, the way that we become people we do not recognise in both good and bad ways, the sheer harsh and unforgiving nature of ageing and how we always see ourselves as young and how these conflicting things can produce unforeseen results.

It appears that Vol 3 is not available on the kindle and I could not find it in other channels either which is a real shame as I’d like to know how the whole story ends. Vol 2 ends with the main characters doing something completely different and Vernon transforming into something wholly bigger. show less