Get Well Soon

Breathtakingly beautiful writing. I was hooked from the first paragraph and read this story in one sitting. Now I must go and read everything Marie-Sabine Roger has written.

4* leaning towards 4.5.

I'm not quite sure what I expected with this one, but I got something different. I think I expected it to be more serious, heavier somehow - maybe it was the word "misanthrope" in the blurb, maybe it was the mention of the Seine (it's Paris, it's bound to be arty-farty, right?) It turns out to be one of those lovely books which have a great deal of depth without ever feeling cumbersome. It drops in perceptive observations and beautifully-worded bits of philosophy while keeping the characters real and appealing even as you recognise their failings. And it includes numerous musings which made me laugh out loud because they were so honest and cheeky. A great read, highly recommended.

Get Well Soon is the poignant and often hysterically funny story about a man who finds himself in the hospital for weeks on end after being rescued from falling off a bridge into the river Seine. He has no recollection of the event. During his stay, he discovers the kindness of relative strangers and emerges from the hospital a much happier person. And, at the end, with good, intrepid, detective work, the mystery of how he happened to fall into the Seine is solved, as he recovers the memory of how he got to that bridge in the middle of the night in the first place.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley. Highly recommended.

I loved this book. My only complaint is that I wish the book was longer. The characters are great; I always like reading about curmudgeons and the other characters are quirky. I think the author did a great job portraying the atmosphere of a hospital and how patients feel about their treatment by the staff. It was interesting to see how a near-death experience and long hospitalization forced Jean-Pierre to evaluate his life and relationships. I highly recommend this book.

Childless widower Jean-Pierre Fabre, 67 years old, just awoke from a coma. He was informed that he had been fished out of the Seine by a young hustler named Camille. He was confused and agitated. How did he end up in the Seine at 5 AM? Did he attempt suicide? Was he drunk and fell in? Inspector Maxime conducts the investigation visiting Jean-Pierre in the hospital, and also the site of the incident. Jean-Pierre, in room #28, is swaddled in plaster and bandages.

Jean-Pierre is impatient and agitated during his lengthy hospital stay. His surgeon has the warmth of an iceberg. The surgeon, with his "flock" of medical students, refer to him as the pelvic fracture in room #28. The nurses ask him,"how are we today?" We? Jean-Pierre is not a "we"! Granted, he is an old codger, but many of his rambling assessments about his hospital stay are accurate, albeit presented humorously. An entity controlled by the hospital staff? Definitely!

Jean-Pierre wants peace, quiet and his hospital room door closed. No such luck. A pudgy, gum popping fourteen year old girl asks daily to use his computer. He is visited by police inspector Maxime regularly and by Camille, a rent boy, who justifies the lifestyle he deems necessary to pay college costs and complete his math/physics degree. Over time, Jean-Pierre realizes that his new-found acquaintances have deeper thoughts and feelings than what they present to him. Each has made life choices and lives with the memories of his actions just like he does. He discovers the surprising events that led to his resultant accident.

"Get Well Soon by Marie-Sabine Roger was a humorous rendering of a lonely curmudgeon's hospital stay and road to recovery after a tragic accident. One has to chuckle at realistic hospitalisms including annoying or loud fellow patients, harried doctors and unlikable food. Author Roger allows Jean-Pierre to interact with several genuine, but flawed characters. These visitors to his hospital room slowly help Jean-Pierre reflect on his life more positively. An enjoyable read.

Thank you Steerforth Press, Pushkin Press and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "Get Well Soon".

Having absolutely loved Soft in the Head last year, I was delighted to receive a copy of Get Well Soon.  As with the previous novel, the quality and wit of the translation was such that it barely felt one at all.  Following in the footsteps of The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out A Window And Disappeared and A Man Called Ove, this is another tale of someone growing old disgracefully.  Jeanne-Pierre has no memory of how it happened, but somehow or other he fell (jumped? was pushed) into the Seine at around 5am in the morning.  Now he's in the hospital, making a slow recovery and meeting the inevitable cast of colourful characters as he does so.

Like Soft in the Head's Germain, Jeanne-Pierre's voice is what steers the story and he is one of those rare narrators who you feel as though  you can actually hear while reading.  He is far more cyncial than Germain, introducing himself with the words, 'I don't like to big myself up, but by the time I was, maybe, six or seven, I'd already had a crack at a bunch of things in terms of committing crimes and stuff that's illegal by law.  Aggravated robbery, sexual assault and battery, blackmail and extortion ...'.  Of course, the sexual assault relates to stealing a kiss as a child the blackmail was carried out on his younger brother but still there is the sense of a bleary-eyed world-weariness and not a great deal of liking for himself.

The bleak outlook continues as he explains that he grew up with his parents, younger brother, his pépé Jean and his dead mémé Ginou, who lived in an urn in the garage.  Both his paternal grandparents had died in an accident when his father was a child as his grandmother had never really seen the point of stop signs.  For young Jeanne-Pierre, he grew up with the persistent feeling that he would never quite feel his father's boots and now as an old man, his brother uses him as a warning to his own children, 'Don't grow up like your uncle, or you'll have me to deal with'.  So as he comes out of his coma and the policeman asked him if he remembers what happened, if he knows why he is here, if he has any desire to end his life, we sense Jeanne-Pierre's ambivalence in his response.

Roger captures the inertia of recovery, the long periods slipping in and out of sleep and aware of events flitting by in the periphery, particularly the way you 'don' have a fracture or an illness, you iare ithe fracture or the illness'.  Jean-Pierre is 'pelvic fracture - Room 28'.  The book has an episodic feel, with the tedium of the hospital broken up by his various visitors.  There is the police officer Maxime, then Jeanne-Pierre's brother,  who is suffering from IBS as his wife makes his life shit while his wife struggles with migraines because he does her head in.  Fretting over everything, Hervé does little to ease his brother's spirits.  There's his nurse Myriam, capable and outspoken.  Then there's the 'short, tubby' girl of around fourteen who repeatedly steals Jeanne-Pierre's laptop but also appears to have taken a liking to him far more than the curmudgeonly old man who would like.  Then there's Camille, the young prostitute who fished Jeanne-Pierre out of the Seine in the first place.  These are not the type of people who the old man would usually be meeting and his prejudices take a while to overcome.

In between all of this, Jeanne-Pierre is thinking back over the past.  He exchanges emails and Instant Messages with his old friend Serge, considers his long marriage to Annie.  Having long worked abroad, he is pestered by guilt for not being a better husband, only now able to admit to himself that he was relieved by the childlessness which broke Annie's heart.  Jeanne-Pierre is too earth-bound for self-loathing, his life too empty of drama to have any incidents to inspire true shame but his reminiscences are full of dislike for the selfishness which has brought him to this point, sitting in a hospital bed without anybody who really cares.  It is tempting to find it trite that he is able to find new people to love, but is it not better to embrace the idea that no matter what your age, you can still make new friends?  That you can set down the fixed ideas, the self-consciousness which might have stopped you from reaching out?  Throughout the book, Jeanne-Pierre acknowledges how his reactions and behaviours have changed as he has grown older - what have you got to lose by softening your heart?

Marie-Sabine Roger has created a waspish old man here and in the tradition of Charles Dickens' Scrooge, he is encouraged to open his heart.  I may be slightly late to Get Well Soon to be able to call it a summer read, so I will instead say that its warmth is perfect to get one through the winter.

I loved the character of Jean-Pierre Fabre. A 67 year old somewhat curmudgeon type of man, at least he tries to be, who has just woke from a coma in the hospital. He has no idea how he got there and why he was recovered from the Seine.

You would think that a story that takes place in one hospital room over a period of several months would be a kind of boring story. However, the author has added several quirky characters each with a different exchange with Jean-Pierre.

I loved John-Pierre, his crustiness and his big heart.

Thanks to Pushkin Press and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

This is funny yet deep little novel about a cranky older man (67-year-old) who finds himself in a hospital after obviously being hit by a car and ending up in the Seine river. A (often harsh, being a patient in pains) time in hospital offers much, to the inevitable surprise to our curmudgeon hero - unexpected friendships, a source for musings (some sarcastic, some well-observed points about life, some downright tender), memories brought out by having time for then, some learning...
This is a light read in meaning that it offers a certain amount of hope and fun, and also the main character in painted in a very engaging light (which sadly is not the case in the real life); but not shallow (could be deeper, that’s why I am not going for 5 stars). I pondered, I smiled, I laughed out loud, I reminisced. Truly nice read.