Kameran

In this improbable love story, we meet a man who is obsessed with himself: how he does things and all the ways he might have done them, how he thinks, why he thinks the way that he thinks, how he might do or think otherwise. What happens? He takes driving lessons, goes grocery shopping, slowly yet methodically battles an olive on a plate. It is all simple and amusing until life intercedes: there is love, suddenly, and change, a flurry of emotion, and an unexpected incident with a camera on a ship. Only Jean-Philippe Toussaint - master of poignant deadpan - could write a novel at once so aloof and so touching, where we come to know our narrator intimately while knowing almost nothing about him.