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Boxes: Shocking, hilarious and poignant noir

Boxes: Shocking, hilarious and poignant noir

by Pascal Garnier

Translated by Melanie Florence

Published by: Gallic Books Limited

Imprint: Gallic Books

112 Pages, 5.00 x 8.00 in

Paperback
9781910477045
Published: October 2015

$14.95

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Description
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Praise

Boxes is a dark tale of a young couple and their enigmatic new neighbours, from the 'slyly funny' [Sunday Times] Pascal Garnier.

'This is quality writing' Crime Review

Brice and Emma had bought their new home in the countryside together. And then Emma disappeared. Now, as he awaits her return, Brice busies himself with DIY and walks around the village. He gradually comes to know his new neighbours including Blanche, an enigmatic woman in white, who has lived on her own in the big house by the graveyard since the death of her father, to whom Brice bears a curious resemblance...

Pascal Garnier, who died in March 2010, was a talented novelist, short story writer, children’s author and painter. From his home in the mountains of the Ardèche, he wrote fiction in a noir palette with a cast of characters drawn from ordinary provincial life. Though his writing is often very dark in tone, it sparkles with quirkily beautiful imagery and dry wit. Garnier’s work has been likened to the great thriller writer, Georges Simenon.

Melanie Florence teaches at the University of Oxford and translates from the French.

Emily Boyce is a translator and editor. She was shortlisted for the French Book Office New Talent in Translation Award in 2008, the French-American Translation Prize in 2016, and the Scott Moncrieff Prize in 2021. She lives in London.

Praise for Pascal Garnier

'Garnier plunges you into a bizarre, overheated world, seething death, writing, fictions and philosophy. He's a trippy, sleazy, sly and classy read' A.L. Kennedy

'A brilliant exercise in grim and gripping irony, it makes you grin as well as wince' Sunday Telegraph

'This story kept me reading without stopping! Not the first time from Gallic Books. It also has an unexpected ending. It is good to leave a book feeling there is more material in it for your mind to conjure with and this does just that!' D.Olser, NetGalley reviewer

'The story is told in clear concise prose and although there is plenty of dark matter there are also surreal touches, and moments of real humour. This is quality writing' Crime Review

'For those with a taste for Georges Simenon or Patricia Highsmith' The Independent

'A horribly funny novel about bereavement: appalling and bracing in equal measure' John Banville

'Tense, strange, disconcerting and slyly funny' Sunday Times

'This one will help reinforce his cult status among noir fans' Publishers Weekly

'Quirky and unsettling' Fiction Fan Blog

Boxes: Shocking, hilarious and poignant noir

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