{"product_id":"the-mystery-of-henri-pick-isbn-9781782275824","title":"The Mystery of Henri Pick","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe delightful first title in a new collaboration with Channel 4's Walter Presents: a fast-paced comic mystery enriched by a deep love of books\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the small town of Crozon in Brittany, a library houses manuscripts that were rejected for publication: the faded dreams of aspiring writers. Visiting while on holiday, young editor Delphine Despero is thrilled to discover a novel so powerful that she feels compelled to bring it back to Paris to publish it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe book is a sensation, prompting fevered interest in the identity of its author - apparently one Henri Pick, a now-deceased pizza chef from Crozon. Sceptics cry that the whole thing is a hoax: how could this man have written such a masterpiece? An obstinate journalist, Jean-Michel Rouche, heads to Brittany to investigate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy turns farcical and moving, \u003ci\u003eThe Mystery of Henri Pick\u003c\/i\u003e is a fast-paced comic mystery enriched by a deep love of books - and of the authors who write them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCurley #108\"A delight with a novel premise.\" \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e— CrimeReads\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Mystery of Henri Pick \u003c\/i\u003eis so ridiculously French that if it started smoking Gitanes while you read it, you wouldn’t be entirely surprised.\" — \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Sunday Times Culture \u003c\/i\u003emagazine\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This book is light, funny and erudite: a delight.\" \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e— The Guardian\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A charming literary caper... A playfully droll satire of the French publishing scene and a completely delightful jeu d’esprit.\" \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e— The Daily Mail\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Written with humour, wit and intelligence, it's set in a world of books and publishing. I really enjoyed it.\" — \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eTripFiction\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Mystery of Henri Pick\u003c\/i\u003e manages the great gap between levity and profundity, between humour and seriousness. A beautiful farce.\"\u003cb\u003e — \u003ci\u003eLe Figaro Littéraire\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eNovelist, screenwriter and musician David Foenkinos was born in 1974. He is the author of fourteen novels that have been translated into forty languages. Several of his works have been adapted for film, including \u003ci\u003eDelicacy\u003c\/i\u003e (2011). \u003ci\u003eThe Mystery of Henri Pick\u003c\/i\u003e is the first title in a new collaboration with Channel 4's Walter Presents.1\u003cbr\u003e In 1971, the American writer Richard Brautigan published\u003cbr\u003e The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966, a quirky love story\u003cbr\u003e about a male librarian and a young woman with a spectacular\u003cbr\u003e body. In a way, the woman is the victim of her body, as if\u003cbr\u003e beauty were a curse. Vida—for that is the heroine’s name—\u003cbr\u003e explains that a man was killed in a car accident because of\u003cbr\u003e her; mesmerized by the sight of this incredible passer-by, he\u003cbr\u003e simply forgot that he was driving. After the crash, the woman\u003cbr\u003e ran over to the car. The driver, covered in blood, managed\u003cbr\u003e to utter a few last words before he died: “You’re beautiful.”\u003cbr\u003e In fact, though, Vida’s story is less important than the\u003cbr\u003e librarian’s. Because the novel’s most distinctive feature is that\u003cbr\u003e the library where he works will accept any book rejected by\u003cbr\u003e a publisher. For example, we meet one man who deposits his\u003cbr\u003e manuscript there after receiving four hundred rejection slips. All\u003cbr\u003e kinds of different books accumulate in this way, from an essay\u003cbr\u003e such as “Growing Flowers by Candlelight in Hotel Rooms” to\u003cbr\u003e a cookery book compiling every meal eaten in Dostoevsky’s\u003cbr\u003e novels. One advantage of this arrangement is that the author\u003cbr\u003e can choose the spot on the shelf where his book will sit. He\u003cbr\u003e can leaf through the pages of his unfortunate colleagues before\u003cbr\u003e finding his place in this sort of anti-posterity. On the other\u003cbr\u003e hand, no manuscripts sent by post are accepted. The author\u003cbr\u003e must come in person to deliver the unwanted tome, as if to\u003cbr\u003e symbolize the final act of its absolute abandonment.\u003cbr\u003e A few years later, in 1984, the author of The Abortion committed\u003cbr\u003e suicide in Bolinas, California. We will return to Brautigan’s\u003cbr\u003e life and the circumstances that drove him to suicide a little\u003cbr\u003e later, but for now let us concentrate on that library, born in\u003cbr\u003e his imagination. In the early 1990s his idea became a reality:\u003cbr\u003e one of his fans created a “library of rejected books” in tribute\u003cbr\u003e to the deceased author, and the Brautigan Library began to\u003cbr\u003e accept the world’s literary orphans. First located in the United\u003cbr\u003e States, it is now housed in Vancouver, Canada.1 Brautigan\u003cbr\u003e would surely have been moved by this initiative, although obviously\u003cbr\u003e it is hard to know how a dead person would feel about\u003cbr\u003e anything. When the library was first founded, it made the news\u003cbr\u003e in several countries, including France. A librarian in Crozon,\u003cbr\u003e Brittany, decided to do the same thing, and in October 1992\u003cbr\u003e he created a French version of the library of rejects.\u003cbr\u003e 2\u003cbr\u003e Jean-Pierre Gourvec was proud of the small sign hanging\u003cbr\u003e outside his library: a quote by Emil Cioran, an ironic choice\u003cbr\u003e for a man who had practically never left his native Brittany:\u003cbr\u003e 1 For more information, go to www.thebrautiganlibrary.org\u003cbr\u003e “Paris is the ideal place to mess up your life.”\u003cbr\u003e Gourvec was one of those men who prefer their region to\u003cbr\u003e their country, without descending into nationalistic fervour.\u003cbr\u003e His appearance might suggest otherwise: a tall, lean man with\u003cbr\u003e bulging neck veins and a very red complexion, Gourvec looked\u003cbr\u003e like someone with a very short fuse. But in fact he was a calm,\u003cbr\u003e thoughtful person, for whom words had a meaning and a destination.\u003cbr\u003e It took only a few minutes in his company for your false\u003cbr\u003e first impression to be replaced by another feeling: here was a\u003cbr\u003e man capable of withdrawing into himself like a Russian doll.\u003cbr\u003e He it was who altered the layout of his bookshelves to create\u003cbr\u003e a space, at the back of the municipal library, for the world’s\u003cbr\u003e homeless manuscripts. That rearrangement brought back to\u003cbr\u003e his mind a line by Jorge Luis Borges: “If you pick up a book\u003cbr\u003e in a library and put it back again, you tire out the shelves.”\u003cbr\u003e They must be exhausted today, thought Gourvec with a smile.\u003cbr\u003e He had the sense of humour of an erudite man: a solitary,\u003cbr\u003e erudite man. That was how he saw himself, and it wasn’t far\u003cbr\u003e from the truth. Gourvec was endowed with a minimal dose of\u003cbr\u003e sociability; he rarely laughed at the same things that made his\u003cbr\u003e neighbours laugh, although he would pretend to whenever they\u003cbr\u003e told a joke. Sometimes he would even go for a beer in the bar\u003cbr\u003e at the end of the street, where he’d talk about everything and\u003cbr\u003e nothing with the other men—particularly about nothing, he\u003cbr\u003e thought—and in those moments of collective excitement he\u003cbr\u003e would occasionally agree to play cards. It didn’t bother him\u003cbr\u003e to be seen as a man like other men.","brand":"Pushkin Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300369780965,"sku":"NP9781782275824","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781782275824.jpg?v=1767740610","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-mystery-of-henri-pick-isbn-9781782275824","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}