The French foreign legion is the stuff of literary and Hollywood legend: an army of the desperate and depraved, who may redeem themselves through service to France—or die in some hellish place, outnumbered, outgunned, unknown, unmourned. Gorgeous East seems a homage to now-dated adventure yarns like Beau Geste, but Girardi, tongue gleefully in cheek, points out that the legion abides, and he sets three contemporary legionnaires down in the middle of what may be the world's least-known, four-decades-old war, in Western Sahara. Colonel Phillipe de Noyer is a French nobleman with a passion for Eric Satie and a patrimony that ensures he will go mad. Lieutenant Evariste Pinard is a French Canadian former thug who finds a home in the legion. American John Smith is a failed musical comedy actor whose life bottoms out in Istanbul when the woman he loved, and sought to reclaim, is murdered. He joins simply to punish himself. These characters and a host of others, including the legion itself, are quirky yet lovingly drawn. Girardi's depictions of Paris, Mont-Saint-Michel, Istanbul, and Western Sahara are rich with imagery, smells and sounds. His prose is, by turns, fluid, exuberant, cynical, fascinatingly discursive, and happily over-the-top. Gorgeous East surprises, delights, and rewards.” —Booklist [STARRED REVIEW]
“Equal parts update of Beau Geste and gonzo parody, Girardi's latest novel is his first American publication in ten years. It's the tale of three French Foreign Legionnaires: de Noyer, an aristocratic, Satie-worshipping French officer suffering from insomnia and genetic insanity; Pinard, a French-Canadian noncom with an oboe and an ugly past; and John Smith (his real name, not the alias chosen by many comrades), a failed American musical comedian just becoming aware of his life's vapidity. All three adore Sophie, de Noyer's bright but suicidal wife. And all three are forced into battle with Al Bab, the imam of a new sect destabilizing the dreary war between Morocco and the Saharoui Arab Democratic Republic. Despite odd moments when thoughts and actions are ascribed to soldier characters that seem more appropriate to the writer, this work delivers vivid characters and wi ld adventure while skewering both Western powers and Islamic terrorists. VERDICT: "Fans of political commentary or violent dark humor will find much to enjoy....Fans of political commentary or violent dark humor will find much to enjoy....” —Library Journal
“[A]n entertaining 21st-century variant on the classic adventure tale. Characterizations are brisk and vivid, as the story whips along toward a violent climax with a nice surprise twist.... Girardi pits the French Foreign Legion against Muslim fanatics. Since Louis Philippe founded the Legion in 1831, its lost-soul volunteers fight in the most desolate corners of the globe mostly because they have nothing better to do with their lives. American musical comedy actor John Smith winds up in the Legion after a disastrous trip to Istanbul that results in the murder of the girlfriend who jilted him for a wealthy Turk. Sous-lieutenant Evariste Pinard, a French Canadian drug dealer and enforcer for a Russian loan shark in France, chose the Legion over prison and deportation. And they're two of the more savory recruits in Girardi's nastily realistic rogues' gallery. Yet it's such an honor to whip lost souls like these into military shape that only the best of France's aristocratic officer class, like Colonel Philippe de Noyer, are deemed worthy to serve in the Legion. Unfortunately, Noyer is also possessed of a hereditary tendency toward madness, sparked in his case by a particularly ugly encounter with a fundamentalist Islamic insurgency in the Western Sahara. The creepy Marabouts, who decapitate their enemies and initiate members with bee stings, are mostly an excuse for lots of action sequences featuring vastly outnumbered Legionnaires grimly holding strongholds soon to be overrun by bloodthirsty savages, or charging into hordes of similar savages crying "à moi la Legion!” —Kirkus
“Gorgeous East is a feast of luminous sentences which carry the reader into a deep and indelible understanding of love and loss. It will teach you everything there is to know about the exquisite glory and the horrible destruction men and women heap upon one another as they travel the gaudy boulevards of desire and the low lit alleyways of doubt. It is a modern masterpiece and the vindication.” —Don Snyder, author of The Cliff Walk
“Robert Girardi's novel is vibrant, exciting, informative and as entertaining a page turner about the French Foreign Legion as P.C. Wren's classic Beau Geste.” —Ron Hansen, author of Exiles: A Novel
“The only thing that could console me for having finished Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma was the discovery that Robert Girardi had written a new book for me to turn to. An absolutely delicious novel.” —Madison Smartt Bell, author of the National Book Award finalist, All Souls’ Rising and Master of the Crossroads
“A skillful stylist who tells his story with rapid ease.” —The Washington Post on Robert Girardi
“An author of substantial gifts…remarkable descriptive ability, subtle humor, and an uncanny ability to create tactile and luminous sense of place.” —Detroit Free Press on Robert Girardi
“A spellbinding storyteller.” —Daily Mail (UK) on Robert Girardi
“A remarkable achievement…part love story, part ghost story, always absorbing.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review on Robert Girardi
A well-researched tale of the modern French Foreign Legion, Girardi's first novel in seven years (after The Wrong Doyle) is a major disappointment that, marred by purple prose ("The pain... blotted out everything-courage, honor, love-and he lay on the sandy ground in the grips of this blackness, moaning weakly") and undermined at key points by parody, fails on every level. The plot centers on three legionnaires: Phillipe de Noyer, an aristocratic officer; Evariste Pinard, a reformed Quebecois thug; and John Smith, an American musical theater actor who joins the legion after his selfishness leads to the murder of his ex-girlfriend. The three men become involved in the legion's battle against an uprising in the western Sahara led by Al-Bab, a portly false prophet. After an attack on one of the legion's desert forts, de Noyer and Smith become Al-Bab's prisoners, and Pinard is dispatched to rescue them. But by the time Al-Bab's actual identity is revealed (a sequence that is, simply, silly-the vital clue is a box of Cap'n Crunch cereal) and the prisoners are rescued, all but the most masochistic readers will have put this down. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Equal parts update of Beau Geste and gonzo parody, Girardi's (A Vaudeville of Devils) latest novel is his first American publication in ten years. It's the tale of three French Foreign Legionnaires: de Noyer, an aristocratic, Satie-worshipping French officer suffering from insomnia and genetic insanity; Pinard, a French-Canadian noncom with an oboe and an ugly past; and John Smith (his real name, not the alias chosen by many comrades), a failed American musical comedian just becoming aware of his life's vapidity. All three adore Sophie, de Noyer's bright but suicidal wife. And all three are forced into battle with Al Bab, the imam of a new sect destabilizing the dreary war between Morocco and the Saharoui Arab Democratic Republic. Despite odd moments when thoughts and actions are ascribed to soldier characters that seem more appropriate to the writer, this work delivers vivid characters and wild adventure while skewering both Western powers and Islamic terrorists. VERDICT Fans of political commentary or violent dark humor will find much to enjoy, but others may take offense or just not get it. [Library marketing campaign.]—Neil Hollands, Williamsburg Regional Lib., VA
Girardi (The Wrong Doyle, 2004, etc.) pits the French Foreign Legion against Muslim fanatics. Since Louis Philippe founded the Legion in 1831, its lost-soul volunteers fight in the most desolate corners of the globe mostly because they have nothing better to do with their lives. American musical comedy actor John Smith winds up in the Legion after a disastrous trip to Istanbul that results in the murder of the girlfriend who jilted him for a wealthy Turk. Sous-lieutenant Evariste Pinard, a French Canadian drug dealer and enforcer for a Russian loan shark in France, chose the Legion over prison and deportation. And they're two of the more savory recruits in Girardi's nastily realistic rogues' gallery. Yet it's such an honor to whip lost souls like these into military shape that only the best of France's aristocratic officer class, like Colonel Philippe de Noyer, are deemed worthy to serve in the Legion. Unfortunately, Noyer is also possessed of a hereditary tendency toward madness, sparked in his case by a particularly ugly encounter with a fundamentalist Islamic insurgency in the Western Sahara. The creepy Marabouts, who decapitate their enemies and initiate members with bee stings, are mostly an excuse for lots of action sequences featuring vastly outnumbered Legionnaires grimly holding strongholds soon to be overrun by bloodthirsty savages, or charging into hordes of similar savages crying "a moi la Legion!" This genre hasn't changed much since Beau Geste, and Girardi is content to stick to the formula of men with dark pasts loyal only to each other, "or else what were they but a bunch of murderers?" Characterizations are brisk and vivid, as the story whips along toward a violent climaxwith a nice surprise twist, followed by one Legionnaire's predictable decision to forsake the chance of love and a fresh start for more brutalization by the military. Nothing new here, but an entertaining 21st-century variant on the classic adventure tale.
