Jonathan Beckman

Duras’s Lodger

Never Any End to Paris

By

Harvill Secker 202pp £12.99 order from our bookshop

In the olden days, before creative-writing courses, a young man with a yen to be a novelist would head to Paris. Once there, he would stock up on Gauloises, head to Les Deux Magots and, with intense concentration, attempt to absorb osmotically whatever genius loci had proved so inspirational to Sartre & Co. Occasionally, a fine novel would be written; more often than not, our hero would learn that graft and talent, not hallowed streets, are the alpha and omega of becoming a writer. Enrique Vila-Matas, now the doyen of Hispanic authors, made such a pilgrimage in 1974 and his charming and wry new novel is the scarcely fictionalised account of his two years in the city, told by his more mature self in what he claims to be a lecture but is, in fact, 113 reminiscences that vary in length from a few pages to a few sentences.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'Darley’s book is not a mad dash through this most compelling and complex of English counties. Nor is it another ti… ,
    • 'Moser’s book offers such a gripping account of a profoundly damaged human being, trapped in a cycle of repetition,… ,
    • 'Ideas that I’d thought were set down in full continue to smoulder ... this book is only a snapshot of some larger… ,
    • 'Full of invention which, at its most pedestrian, is eminently Victorian, and at its most unrestrained wildly imagi… ,
    • 'What in other hands could have been a dry, pedantic account of Christianity’s birth and evolution becomes in Holla… ,
    • RT : One of my favourite literary magazines is celebrating 40 years this year. Here is the September edition of… ,
    • 'Now that the Thames is too fast-flowing to freeze, its spirit’s devotees ... have found other climes for their pri… ,
    Follow Us