Oh, so we are publishing our Top 15 French books? Great.
Only one work per author.
Copying your MO.
1. Charles Baudelaire -
The Flowers of Evil
2. Louis-Ferdinand Céline -
Journey to the End of the Night
3. Julien Gracq -
The Opposing Shore
4. Jonathan Littell -
The Kindly Ones
5. Michel Houellebecq -
Atomised/The Elementary Particles
6. Philippe Claudel -
Grey Souls
7. Michel Tournier -
The Erl-King/The Ogre
8. Albert Camus -
The Stranger
9. Marguerite Yourcenar -
Memoirs of Hadrian
10. Honoré de Balzac -
Lost Illusions
11. Pascal Quignard -
All the World's Mornings
12. Émile Zola -
Nana
13. Mathias Énard -
Compass
14. Emmanuel Carrère -
Limonov
15. Anatole France -
Thaïs
Proust left out intentionally. Next in would have been Guy de Maupassant's
Bel-Ami and then probably Alain-Fournier's
Le Grand Meaulnes or Mallarmé's
Poésies.
Death on the Instalment Plan would be #3 if I wasn't following the "only one work per author" rule.
I tried not to let how much I love the film adaptation of
Tous les Matins du Monde influence my rating of Quignard's novella; the film is heavenly to look at, and at times actually more subtle and nuanced than the book. Anyway, the novella itself is an excellent early example of the sort of unambitious but flawlessly crafted miniatures that have won the Goncourt with some regularity over the past 30 years.
As for
Limonov, needless to say that the subject of the book makes for 80% of its appeal, but Carrère still had to make that superb material work.