Live Fast: A Prix Goncourt-Winning Autobiographical Elegy on Love, Loss, and Fate
一つの事故に至るまでの選択と偶然をたどりながら、喪失と記憶を見つめ直す静かな作品。抑制の効いた語りが、かえって愛情の輪郭を際立たせる。
作品情報
事故の手前にあった、取り返しのつかない選択を見つめ直す。
Brigitte Giraud が、夫を失った事故の記憶を手がかりに、何があの結末を招いたのかを静かに検証していく長編。家の購入、修繕の計画、日々の小さな判断が、やがて取り返しのつかない出来事へとつながっていく過程を、喪失の痛みとともにたどる。
レビュー要約
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喪失の記憶をたどる告白体の強さと、ひとつの事故に至るまでの因果の連鎖を緊張感をもって描く構成が支持されている。感情をあえて抑えた語りが、かえって痛みを深く残すという受け止め方が多い。
書籍情報
- 出版社
- Ecco
- 発売日
- 2025-02-11
- ページ数
- 176ページ
- 言語
- 英語
- サイズ
- 13.97 x 1.65 x 20.96 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780063346727
- ISBN-10
- 0063346729
- 価格
- 3992 JPY
- カテゴリ
- 洋書/Mystery & Thrillers/Thrillers/Psychological & Suspense
Winner of the Prix Goncourt A powerful autobiographical novel of loss, an unforgettable memoir of grief, and the small decisions that define the course of fate. Paced and structured with the inevitable suspense of a countdown, Brigitte Giraud’s tense and haunting work of literary fiction follows one woman’s relentless quest to comprehend the motorcycle accident that took the life of her partner Claude at age 41. The narrator of Live Fast recounts the chain of events that led up to the fateful accident, tracing the tiny, maddening twists of fate that might have prevented its tragic outcome. Each chapter asks the rhetorical question, “what if,” departing from an image or memory from early years in Algeria during the war, to moving to the suburbs of Lyon, buying and renovating a home where they could “put down their suitcase for a whole life.” A sensitive elegy to her husband and a subtle, precise vision of a lasting love, Live Fast is a moving and electrifying portrait of love and loss, reminding us that living itself can be dangerous.
Brigitte Giraud is a French writer and novelist and the author of fourteen books. She received the 2022 Prix Goncourt for Live Fast , which was also a big bestseller in France. Live Fast is her first book to be published in English.
レビュー
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Delicious Read
Live Fast by Brigitte Giraud (translated by Cory Stockwell) Giraud is serving grief on a countdown plate. The story follows a woman trying to understand the motorcycle accident that took her partner Claude, and instead of telling it straight, she breaks it apart like she is trying to undo time itself. Every chapter is a "what if." What if this had not happened. What if that choice went differently. What if fate had just... shifted a few inches to the left. We go from early love in Algeria, to building a life in Lyon, to the quiet domestic details that feel so ordinary you almost forget how fragile they are. Then suddenly, nothing is ordinary anymore. And the wild part is how personal it gets. The "if onlys" are not neat or logical. They are intimate, sometimes irrational, sometimes painfully self directed. Giraud even turns the lens on herself, asking what role she played in the chain of events, knowing full well the answer will not bring anyone back. But that is the point. There is no undo button. This is grief as pattern recognition. Love as something that keeps existing even after it has nowhere to go. And fate, not as something dramatic, but as a series of small decisions you never realize are irreversible until they already are. It is short, sharp, and quietly devastating. Less than 200 pages, but it lingers like a conversation you replay in your head at 2am. And maybe that is the truth of it. We do not move on from the "what ifs." We just learn to live beside them.
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Translate more to English please!
Fantastic book. I hope she’ll have more of her work translated in to English. A unique and movingly written perspective. Well deserving of the prize.
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a must-read
This novel reads like a work of nonfiction. It captures the “what ifs” that emerge when something tragic or unwanted happens.
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One of the most boring & disappointing books I have ever read
This entire book is about this woman still processing her grief 20 years after the fact of her husband's death. OK... but she goes off into ridiculous tangents that make it a really boring read. The final insult to injury is when she talks to a participant in the accident who shares her husband's last words ... which she never shares!! I really have difficulty understanding how a book like this gets impressive reviews.
関連する文学賞
- ゴンクール賞 第120回（2022年） ・Winner