One Way

As part of my obsession with promotions in the Kobo Library, I decided to buy a Goncourt prize: One Way by Didier van Cauwelaert. I admit that I knew nothing about the author, and I had never heard this title. It was the mention "Prix Goncourt" that concluded the sale.

Summary

A baby is orphaned after a car accident. The person responsible for the accident, repentant, takes him in and names him Aziz. He grows up in a neighborhood in the north of Marseille, a neighborhood of small-time thugs, where he meets Lila. He becomes a specialist in car theft, and falls madly in love with Lila.

Unfortunately, Lila marries another car thief. Fortunately, he dies a quick and violent death, and Aziz takes advantage of the opportunity to get engaged to the grieving widow.

But his plans don't work out as planned. In the middle of the engagement dinner, the police show up and accuse Aziz of stealing the ring. Aziz has stolen things, but not that. And it all goes from there: after examining his (fake) passport, the authorities decide that he should be taken back to his town, Irghiz (a fictitious town invented for the purpose of the fake passport).

The humanitarian attaché who accompanies him takes his role very seriously, and Aziz is forced to invent a nonsensical story to explain why Irghiz is not on any map. To repatriate Aziz then becomes the attaché's great mission, and he undertakes to write a novel about their history.

Review

At first I saw a striking resemblance with The Life Before Us by Romain Gary, because of the narrator. He is a child, an Arab, an orphan, poor, a bit naive, quite endearing. But I didn't particularly love The Life Before Usso it wasn't necessarily a good thing.

And frankly, I remained unmoved. The book wasn't bad at all, on the contrary: the story was fun, the characters were fun, it was well-written, and quite gripping. I read the whole thing without a problem.

On the other hand, while it was funny, I didn't laugh. While it was well written, I wasn't impressed. While the characters were fun, I didn't get attached to them that much. And it's a read that I will be quick to forget.

I'm going to start getting suspicious of prizes.