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the complete review - fiction

The Only Son

by
Stéphane Audeguy

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : starts off very well, but Audeguy can't see it through

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• " So folly and whimsy run high. Clearly, Audeguy wants to distract the reader from the thoughtful relation his narrative bears to Rousseau’s work and the larger dilemmas of eighteenth-century France. He uses his picaresque episodes as a magician uses misdirection, aiming to work, just beyond the audience’s gaze, the legerdemain for his grander tricks, the real heart of his show." - Rivka Galchen, Bookforum
  
  
• "Schließlich entwickelt sich Audeguys Fabulierlust aber zum lauwarmen Selbstläufer. Dabei wäre aus dem Thema mehr zu machen gewesen." - Niklas Bender, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
  
  
• "Fils unique est d'abord un agréable pastiche picaresque, écrit à la mode du dix-huitième siècle. (...) Le roman d'Audeguy est également un jeu intertextuel" - Philippe Sandeel, Libération
  
  
• "It’s quite an achievement, this picaresque adventure, which reads without any false notes of anachronism and in John Cullen’s translation harmonizes beautifully with the cadence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s style." - Judith Warner, The New York Times Book Review
  
  
• "(T)he book strives to be both a critical gloss on the Revolution and a madcap romp, with more success, ultimately, at the latter." - The New Yorker
  
  
• "(A) spry cod biography of Francois Rousseau who, far from being lazy and unreliable, is resilient, quick-witted and venturesome. (...) Audeguy's novel moves along smartly and is told with relish, an engaging wryness of manner and bold picaresque inventiveness. His language has enough sententiousness and imperfect subjunctives to give the narrative an authentic period feel, though swots will find enough errors to score points" - David Coward, Times Literary Supplement
  
  
• "So wird dem Leben des François Rousseau, von ihm selbst erzählt zwar keine so bahnbrechende Rolle innerhalb der Literaturgeschichte zufallen wie den Confessions seines "Bruders", aber vielleicht ist es sogar die vergnüglichere Lektüre." - Carolin Fischer, Die Welt
  
  
• "Gelungen ist an diesem Buch vor allem die Art, wie das Doppelmuster komponiert ist. (...) Man braucht aber Rousseaus Werke nicht unbedingt gelesen zu haben, um die Zusammenhänge erfassen zu können. Stéphane Audeguy liefert alles Nötige mit im Roman. (...) Wohl fehlt der Romanfigur des François Rousseau mitunter die nötige Dichte. Die Fäden der literarischen Konstruktion scheinen durch." - Joseph Hanimann, Die Zeit

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       George MacDonald Fraser famously and cleverly spun a whole book series out of a small episode in Tom Brown's School Days, taking the minor character of Flashman and inventing an adventure-filled future for him. Stéphane Audeguy does much the same in The Only Son, except he raises the stakes by imagining not the life of a fictional character, but of a real one, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's older brother.
       Practically nothing is known about the brother, but Audeguy gleefully builds on the brief mention in The Confessions:

My brother, who was seven years older than myself, was brought up to my father's profession. The extraordinary affection they lavished on me might be the reason he was too much neglected: this certainly was a fault which cannot be justified. His education and morals suffered by this neglect, and he acquired the habits of a libertine before he arrived at an age to be really one. My father tried what effect placing him with a master would produce, but he still persisted in the same ill conduct. Though I saw him so seldom that it could hardly be said we were acquainted, I loved him tenderly, and believe he had as strong an affection for me as a youth of his dissipated turn of mind could be supposed capable of. One day, I remember, when my father was correcting him severely, I threw myself between them, embracing my brother, whom I covered with my body, receiving the strokes designed for him; I persisted so obstinately in my protection, that either softened by my cries and tears, or fearing to hurt me most, his anger subsided, and he pardoned his fault. In the end, my brother's conduct became so bad that he suddenly disappeared, and we learned some time after that he was in Germany, but he never wrote to us, and from that day we heard no news of him: thus I became an only son.

     Of course no one reads your work anymore. What purpose would be served by doing so ? The Revolution has turned your dreams into reality.

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Links:

• Folio publicity page

• Bookforum
• Cécilialit (French)
• Deutschlandradio (German)
• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (German)
• La Lettrine (French)
• The New Yorker
• Seattle Times
• Tages-Anzeiger (German)
• Die Welt (German)
• Die Zeit (German)

• The Confessions - full text (W. Conyngham Mallory translation)

• The Theory of Clouds

• See Index of French literature
• See Index of Real People in Works of Fiction

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About the Author:

       French author Stéphane Audeguy was born in 1964.

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© 2008 the complete review

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