2024 BOOK REVIEW #25: OCTAVE AVAIT VINGT ANS, BY GASPARD KOENIG

Back to French I went for Book Review #25 of 2024, and to an author I’ve read before, Gaspard Koenig, this time his first, Octave avait vingt ans, which to me read as pure aristocratic delirium.

I prefer gutter delirium, but the streaks of irreverence, the randomness, the insouciance was at levels in this book I've rarely read elsewhere. It's partly an homage to the great French literary stylist Proust and one his side characters, updated for equally decadent times.

It’s about the fleeting nature of youth, and at least Octave seems to make the most of it. Relationships are intense even if futile.

There are competing forces of family and societal pressure dueling with the main character’s disregard for decency and defining himself in a world of passion and simulated showdowns.

The author himself rebelled against his intellectual left wing parents, to become a liberal in the French sense of the word, but with a basic income component, and later failing in a vain attempt in the French presidential election with a political movement called Simple. He has admired the work of the late anarchist David Graeber, creating an interesting cocktail of reflexion.

This, his first novel from 2004, seems to be him at his wildest, both in style, and without much of a structure besides a coming of age plot, giving him free rein to wax frenetically poetic.