レビュー

• Life changes in an instant

  Le Figaro described the book as a masterpiece...that's not an exaggeration, it is. It's not about terrorism, though without the brutal attack at Charlie Hebdo there would be no book. Philippe wastes no energy on hatred. He takes you where he is...the theatre the night before...the meeting room at CH where the attack took place (incredibly descriptive, terrifying), the hospitals, the surgeries, the friends, and lovers. But he gives you intimate access to his mind, his nightmares, his pain, his fears for his present life (which has been disfigured both physically and psychologically), and fears for what the future holds...he shows you what he sees and more wrenchingly, what he feels. His love of literature, art and music help him to move forward while offering him some solace. He has an acute sense of observation...people, places, moods. When I finished the book, I began again from the start. I did not want to let him go...the patient, the person, the writer. You feel that you know him. Read the book...it's transformative. This is an edit, as I sit here on a Covid Friday lockdown. If, like me, you want to know what Philippe Lancon is doing now...he still writes for Charlie Hebdo. You can read his articles on their website...charliehebdo.fr. They're in French. If you read English, Riss (the editor) has some articles in English. Then, of course, there are the cartoons...very funny (if you have that kind of mind...I do). And for the cartoons, well, you'll need no translation. A gutsy, talented group of men and women.

• A great book

  A delicate and forceful book, intimate and open. A touching picture of the beginning of a recovery from an horrendously barbaric act.

• Moving, Evocative, Superb

  This book is transcendent. I don’t know how Lançon did it. He is less a sufferer than a character of Proust’s, without self-pity, without rancor, without ego. Perhaps it’s the quality of the unanswerable questions he asks himself, and the way he asks them, without asking them too often, that give this book what I can only call its soul. At 473 pages, I expected to encounter passages of self-absorption now and then; I never did. Lançon has many ways of touching on experiences of love, from his childhood onward, without seeming to have wanted to; the writing simply took him down those paths; he was unfailingly improvisatory; it seemed like a privilege to be with him. This book aroused feelings in me, as I read it, that kept me reading it and led me to ask Lançon-like questions about my own life. I will return to many of its chapters, to experience those feelings again and to revisit those questions.

• Ay it’s brilliant

  This book scared the hell out of me.

• A man and his affliction both worth knowing.

  A turbulent cartoon and its aftermath – the staff of Charlie Hebdo are slaughtered but that is not the story.* A difficult read: how interesting is the reconstruction of Philippe Lançon mangled face and body? For a medical student a treasure; hundreds of pages of intense detail may be a task for many, but intertwined an intriguing battle with the ‘Me’ we all contain -- thank Kafka, thank Proust. A soaring description of Spanish Art focused this reader again. Reflect before you enter. 4 Stars *The following issue print ran 7.95 million copies in six languages, compared to its typical print run of 60,000 in only French.

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