January 30, 2023
A child’s memories of his troubling early years flood the slack, underwhelming latest from Fabre (The Waitress Was New). The reader first meets Edgar, the narrator, in 1964 Paris. At three, he barely speaks, and he’s internalized the frequent impression from others that he’s “not all there.” Despite what others think, though, he has a rich interior life. In a clever move, Fabre makes Edgar’s exceptionally large ears a metaphor for the child’s ability to pick up on people’s thoughts. “Mickey Mouse was deaf compared to me,” Edgar narrates, explaining how he’s able to “hear” other characters’ internal monologues. In one of the narrative’s few pivotal scenes, Edgar witnesses his mother, Isabelle, meet a man named Bernard, whom Isabelle then sees for a brief period. (Edgar’s version of Bernard’s first impression of Isabelle: “She’s afraid of everything... her kid’s sick. She’s beautiful, she doesn’t know she’s beautiful.”) Edgar is then sent to a foster home in the country until he’s 11, and his account of these years is a jumble of scatological obsession, vague references to the May Uprising of 1968, and puerile accounts of “play lovers” with a foster sister. Previously, the author gave captivating voices to characters on the margins. This time, there’s little more than a faint echo.