I'm Gone
Winner of France's prestigious Goncourt Prize in 1999, this novel tells what happens after Felix Ferrar, a sophisticated Parisian art dealer, walks out on his wife one January night. A few months later, after hearing from Delahaye, his gallery assistant, about a shipwreck filled with rare Inuit art, he finds himself on a Canadian icebreaker bound for the Arctic. Ultimately successful in his quest to find the wreck, he returns to Paris only to have the three cartons of art objects immediately stolen from the gallery. As the police investigate, Ferrar undergoes heart bypass surgery and experiences several emotionally unsatisfying romantic trysts. Veering among irony, satire, and more than occasional seriousness, Echenoz both employs and subverts the conventions of the adventure and detective genres in this sly send-up of contemporary art and life. Recommended for collections of French literature and for larger fiction collections generally.DLawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, Andover, MACopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.