My Life as Edgar

This is my first book by Dominique Fabre and I am intrigued. Edgar the little character is unique in his own way. He listens to everything and perceives everything around himself. This is such a gentle novel that touches you deeply.

In a new translation from the French, My Life as Edgar (originally released in 1998 as Ma vie d’Edgar) is a strange little book about a strange little boy and his strained efforts to understand the strange and seemingly unknowable world around him. The novel opens with Edgar describing himself as having the “features of a kid with Down syndrome – a kind of coldness around the eyes, pale lips, big cheeks, a big butt, though my chromosomes weren’t really to blame”; he also has enormous ears, a tongue that won’t stay in his mouth, and at three years old, he drools and moos and growls at people who conclude that Edgar is “not all there”. With a beautiful single mother who doesn’t know what to do with her unusual son, Edgar will be shipped off to a sort of foster home in the country (which he loves) for the next eight years, and when he is finally brought back home to Paris, he will be immediately sent off to a church-run boarding school (which he hates). Throughout, we are in Edgar’s mind as he circles through experiences, mashing up the past and present and the parts he makes up, and even if he thinks of himself as a “noodle” or “the village idiot”, he comes across to the reader as intelligent and self-aware and in need of his Maman. Edgar has no control over his situation, thinks more than he is able or willing to communicate, and the interior life that author Dominique Fabre paints is one of seeking and longing and unquestioned acceptance of a bad lot in life. This short work is more about what happens on the inside than on the out, and overall, it moved me.

Thank you Net Galley and Archipelago for providing me with and ARC

This is my first Fabre novel and I had no prior knowledge of the style or the themes before starting, yet from the start, Edgar and his peculiar actions drew my attention. The way he describes himself and bends the lines between the retelling of his childhood and the imaginary additions he inputted were done very seamlessly. Though at points it felt as if the novel's plot was slow-paced and felt more of a short story stretched thin, Edgar's character always drew me back in and made the book stand out.

An interesting story. Seems to be a good translation of this unusual tale. This one will stick with me for a while.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!

A sensitive portrayal of a singular mind, this book is beautifully written, with a lovingly rendered world that seems not far away from our own at all.

My Life as Edgar narrates the life of a 3-year-old boy who defines himself and his existence through the gaze of others. We are introduced to a character whose usually big ears haves become his gate into others' interior monologues. This is how the nivel starts and it follows Edgar through different steps of his childhood.

I find that the journalistic style of the novel perfectly illustrates the urgency and anxious existence and senseof loss Edgar experiences and, through his story, the existential unbalance of other characters in a France that is about to witness the upheaval of "Mai 68".

If Iam to describe the effect of the novel on me, I would choose the sord "uneasiness". from the very first page this is how it was. probably because the author gives voice to the marginalised and echoes it in a poignant somehow dry style (I find this to be a great combination!)