My Wish List

by Gregoire Delacourt, Anthea Bell (Translator)

Overview

The #1 bestselling international phenomenon that asks, If you won the lottery, would you trade your life for the life of your dreams?

Jocelyne lives in a small town in France where she runs a fabric shop, has been married to the same man for twenty-one years, and has raised two children. She is beginning to wonder what happened to all those dreams she had when she was seventeen. Could her life have been different?

Then she wins the lottery—and suddenly finds the world at her fingertips. But she chooses not to tell anyone, not even her husband—not just yet. Without cashing the check, she begins to make a list of all the things she could do with the money. But does Jocelyne really want her life to change?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143124658
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/25/2014
Edition description:	Translatio
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Grégoire Delacourt was born in Valenciennes, France, in 1960. His first novel, L'Ecrivain de la Famille, was published in 2011 and won five literary prizes. My Wish List was a runaway number-one bestseller in France; publication rights have been sold in more than twenty-five countries. Delacourt lives in Paris, where he runs an advertising agency with his wife.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Fans of Chocolat and The Elegance of the Hedgehog will adore My Wish List, an emotionally wrenching yet ultimately uplifting story of ambition, risk, and acceptance. . . . Jocelyne is an immensely likable narrator, and Delacourt’s fluid, elegant prose brings layers of depth to a relatively simple story.” —Booklist, starred review

“Revelatory . . . with an unexpected twist that speaks volumes about the nature of truth, love and happiness.” —Shelf Awareness, starred review

“This dastardly little novel focuses on love, desire and what we stand to lose when we win. . . . [A book] the late novelist Josephine Hart might have written.” —Kirkus Reviews

“What is happiness, what can money buy, what happens to love? . . . [My Wish List] will attract . . . those who enjoyed Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog. . . . A sparse, understated, philosophical [novel with] appeal to male as well as female readers, and for literary fiction fans and book clubs.” —Library Journal

“[A] fable about how money changes everything, and nothing . . . The aching need for comfort, safety and love that it describes is universal.” —Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

01/27/2014
The melancholy protagonist of Delacourt’s novel, the first by this French author to be published in English, has the chance to answer a perennial hypothetical question, “What would you do if you won the lottery?” Jocelyne, a 47-year-old shop owner, knitting blogger, and empty nester in Arras, France, wrestles with how to spend her €18.5 million jackpot. “I think of myself, of all that will now be possible for me, and I don’t want any of it,” Jocelyne laments. She hides her lottery check in her shoe, and keeps the news of it from her husband, Jocelyn (oddly, the two have nearly identical names); their grown-up daughter, Nadine; and their son, Romain, confessing only to her stroke-afflicted father, who quickly forgets what Jocelyne has told him. While she compiles her touchingly ordinary wish lists, Jocelyne’s business booms, her blog readers multiply, and her morose husband—who was previously cruel and distant because of a still birth in their past—grows tender. This dark fable about how money changes everything, and nothing, was a bestseller in France, and the aching need for comfort, safety and love that it describes is universal, even if Jocelyne’s ambivalence toward big money may puzzle American readers. Agent: Jessica Purdue, Orion. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Delacourt’s appealing novel (a huge best seller in his native France) [is a] dark, suspenseful fable.” —The New York Times

“Fans of Chocolat and The Elegance of the Hedgehog will adore My Wish List, an emotionally wrenching yet ultimately uplifting story of ambition, risk, and acceptance. . . . Jocelyne is an immensely likable narrator, and Delacourt’s fluid, elegant prose brings layers of depth to a relatively simple story.” —Booklist, starred review

“Revelatory . . . with an unexpected twist that speaks volumes about the nature of truth, love and happiness.” —Shelf Awareness, starred review

“This dastardly little novel focuses on love, desire and what we stand to lose when we win. . . . [A book] the late novelist Josephine Hart might have written.” —Kirkus Reviews

“What is happiness, what can money buy, what happens to love? . . . [My Wish List] will attract . . . those who enjoyed Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog. . . . A sparse, understated, philosophical [novel with] appeal to male as well as female readers, and for literary fiction fans and book clubs.” —Library Journal

“[A] fable about how money changes everything, and nothing . . . The aching need for comfort, safety and love that it describes is universal.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

03/15/2014
Madame Jocelyn Guerbette is middle aged, stuck in a boring life, with a few friends, a business she likes, and a husband who's just okay. When her lottery ticket hits the big jackpot of 18 million Euro, the psychologist "with Daisy Duck lips" warns Jocelyn about the perils of sudden wealth. Before cashing in her winning ticket, Jocelyn makes lists of her desires, which fluctuate with her moods. Brief, vignette chapters entice the reader to persist, pursuing questions for potential book club discussion that are universally applicable: What is happiness, what can money buy, what happens to love? VERDICT Already a best seller in France with rights sold in 30 countries, this slim novel by a prize-winning French author will attract U.S. readers, especially those who enjoyed Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, because it addresses the question of suddenly coming into big money and does it in a sparse, understated, philosophical manner that is wholly French. Overall this translates into appeal to male as well as female readers, and for literary fiction fans and book clubs.—Mary K. Bird-Guilliams, Chicago

Library Journal

2014-01-21
Money can't buy happiness for an introspective housewife who wins the lottery. This is the first novel to appear in English by French author Delacourt, who was recently in the news after being sued by actress Scarlett Johansson for using her image in another novel. The Wish List details the inner life of Jocelyne, a 47-year-old wife in a small French town. Her family includes a stillborn baby, two grown children, and her husband, curiously named Jocelyn, a middle manager at a Häagen-Daz factory who drinks too much beer and dreams of luxuries like a flat-screen television. Jocelyne also has her own career, running a fabric shop and composing a very successful blog about sewing and knitting. She claims happiness, with her simple descriptions of everyday pleasures, only exposing her fears to her stroke-addled father. Everything comes tumbling down when, at the urging of two younger friends, Jocelyne buys a lottery ticket and wins over €18 million, a fact that she keeps secret from everyone, hiding the check in a wardrobe. "It's only in books that you can change your life," she advises. "Wipe out everything at a stroke. Do away with the weight of things. Delete the nasty parts, and then at the end of a sentence find yourself on the far side of the world." At the heart of Jocelyne's anxiety over her new fortune is a kind of quiet hysteria, steeped in the fear that if she gives her husband the objects that he covets, he will no longer want her. As Jocelyne's secret is finally uncovered, this domestic novel reveals itself as one the late novelist Josephine Hart might have written. A best-seller in its original language, this dastardly little novel focuses on love, desire and what we stand to lose when we win.

Kirkus Reviews