Voice Over - Softcover

Curiol, Celine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571229964 ISBN 13: 9780571229963

Publisher: Faber & Faber Ltd, 2008

Synopsis

A young woman works in Paris at the Gare du Nord. She spends every day talking into a microphone, announcing platform numbers and timetables, essentially invisible to the world. She falls in love with a man who, in turn, is in love with another. Our heroine considers her rival to be physically stunning, as beautiful 'as an angel'. She decides not to pursue the man. Rather, she is prepared to wait, alone that is, until one night a male friend of the 'angel' asks her what she does for a living, and she answers, 'Prostitute.'
Celine Curiol's debut novel is a vision of love and relationships in all their ambiguities, shot through with the poignancy of urban existence.

About this title

About the Author:

Celine Curiol lives in New York and is the NY correspondent for BBC Afrique. As a journalist she also contributes to Liberation and the radio programme France Culture. This, her debut novel, was first published in France in 2005 by Actes Sud as Voix Sans Issue.

From Booklist:

This debut novel, a best-seller in France in 2005, may attract media attention because of its distinctive style, titillating subject matter, and the fact that it is oh-so-French. The nameless Parisian female narrator works at the Gare du Nord train station announcing arrival and departure times. With little connection to her coworkers and the harried travelers who throng the station, she is hardly more than a disembodied voice. The job perfectly complements her emotional state. She is obsessed with a married man who scarcely notices her, and she often finds herself at the mercy of strange men, including a transvestite entertainer, a North African drug dealer, and a psychiatric intern with a bondage fetish. She finally makes a connection with the man she loves, but things do not go smoothly, and she seems headed for either a breakdown or a breakthrough. Although some readers may tire of the neurotic behavior that Curiol so lovingly details, others will respond to the palpable emotional tension she creates with her short, clipped sentences and her creepy cast of characters. --Joanne Wilkinson

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber Ltd
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0571229964
• ISBN 13: 9780571229963
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288