"A real-time study in crippling self-consciousness, the fragility of normalcy, and the reality of violence."—The New York Times
"The amount of detail and digression that Mauvignier explores in his slow, finely drawn (and smoothly translated) dissection of these lives is remarkable and goes far to sustaining interest... [in this] quasi-Proustian noir."—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
"Mauvignier spins a mesmerizing psychological horror set in the seemingly humdrum French hamlet of Three Lone Girls... Readers will be riveted."—Publishers Weekly
"Mauvignier’s ability to keep the shocks coming are among the qualities that make this riveting novel so nastily effective."—The Guardian
"A chilling, masterful work. It dwells in that dim, haunted space between violence and mundanity, repression and revelation—that rare thing, a genre-bending novel that sacrifices neither its literary merits nor its pulpy thrills. It has bitter truths to tell."—Gawker
“The intensity of the writing lends a feeling of fierce suspense... Mr. Mauvignier peels back those layers of reality in order to better grasp the people they finally form, a composite far more profound than the sum of its parts.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Imagine a Stephen King thriller hijacked by Proust. Clammy-handed suspense, nerve-shredding tension, but related in serpentine, elegant prose, each climax held suspended—deferred gratification. What Javier Marías did for the spy story, Laurent Mauvignier does for terror.”—The Spectator
“[Mauvignier] pulls out the gun of psychological scrutiny and puts four inhabitants of a small hamlet into the crosshairs of a relentless tour de force of narrative reckoning.”—World Literature Today
“One of France’s most talented writers, Laurent Mauvignier always kept a low profile on the literary scene—until his stunning novel about the Algerian War became a runaway bestseller.”—France Today
“[Mauvignier is] one of the major French writers today.”—Lire Magazine
"Mauvignier's novel is one of the most impressive fictional portrayals of the Algerian war to date."—Patricia M.E. Lorcin, H-France.net
“The Wound gives us a France that few American readers will recognize, a land and a people marked by a history in which memory and violence can seem indistinguishable. . . . David and Nicole Ball’s translation is as elegant as a flick-knife—a superb version of this viscerally important novel.”—Michael Gorra, author of Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece
★ 2022-11-16
A woman’s 40th birthday soiree doesn’t go as planned in this psychological thriller.
The first sentence begins “She watches him through the window” and continues till the end of the page, some 275 words. It carries the observations, visual and thoughtful, of Christine, a 69-year-old artist living in a rural French hamlet. The man she is watching, 47-year-old Patrice, is her neighbor and the father in a family of three. He has driven Christine to a police station, but it will be eight pages before Mauvignier, a French writer born in 1967, reveals why—so she can report a threatening anonymous letter—and almost 100 pages before a palpable threat descends upon the hamlet, when a stranger appears and a dog is stabbed. Over a period of just 36 hours, Christine, Patrice, his wife, Marion, and their daughter, Ida, take turns as the center of deep third-person narratives that range from childhood fears to marital friction, financial woes, job problems, and, crucially, secrets rearing up from the near and distant past. Mauvignier weaves lines of typical tension among family members and neighbors but makes it clear that some larger problem is looming. Those lines tighten and turn atypical when Patrice hires a prostitute while running errands for Marion’s birthday party, and they start to tauten when a flat tire delays his return home. The amount of detail and digression that Mauvignier explores in his slow, finely drawn (and smoothly translated) dissection of these lives is remarkable and goes far to sustaining interest amid minimal action. Readers whose tastes run to the pacey thrillers of James Patterson may find their patience frayed by the glacial progress of this quasi-Proustian noir. But if the beer god had meant everyone to drink Miller Light, he wouldn’t have given the Belgian Trappists all those rich recipes.
A compelling blend of mystery, horror, and suspense.
