On se ment toujours. We are always telling ourselves lies. Such a powerful opening line. After reading Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, I wanted a quick read so I read the book My Wish List in one sitting, the English translation of the French novel La liste de mes envies written by Grégoire Delacourt. The English translation is by Anthea Bell.
We all have our
wish lists. Some wishes will remain wishful thinking while some dreams can be
achieved if we work hard and are determined enough. There are always things we regret
and wish we had not got ourselves
into some situations we are in or wish that we could have done things
differently but would you really want to trade your
life for the life of your dreams if you could ? What if you won the lottery ?
In My Wish List, Jocelyne
Guerbnette lives in Arras where she runs a fabric shop and a successful blog
about knitting, embroidery and dressmaking. She is married to the same man for
twenty-one years and has raised two children who are living their own lives
now. She is beginning to wonder
what happened to those dreams she had when she was seventeen and whether her
life could have been different. It
is a familiar theme. One chance in seventy-six million, and it happened to her.
She has won the lottery. Yet the protagonist somehow has a sense of ambivalence
when she finds out that she has won eighteen million euros , 18,547,301 euros and 28 centimes to be exact
.You would think that the answer is straightforward because with all those
money, you could leave your mundane job, change your wardrobe, get the car and
house you want, go places, dine in all the Michelin starred restaurants and pursue whatever luxuries that money can buy. Not Jocelyne. She
tells nobody when she wins the lottery. She only tells her stroke afflicted father who lives in
a present that lasts six minutes as he is suffering from dementia and every six
minutes he will ask who she is and if her mom is coming to see him. The story
is narrated in Jocelyne’s voice which is authentically female and the
sensibility is quintessentially French.
In Jocelyne’s
voice,
‘ Being rich means seeing all that’s
ugly and having the arrogance to think you can change things. All you have to
do is pay for it.’
Jocelyne makes
her wish list. Her wishes are modest and she loves the life that she has had
with her husband and in her hesitation, things
spin out of control.
great review, I also enjoyed this book very much
ReplyDeleteThank you Emma
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