A Parisian writer lacking inspiration finds the heroine of his next novel outside his apartment. Telling the story of octogenarian Madeleine and her family, he finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into their lives - with unexpected consequences.
‘By entering the fabric of an everyday French family, he tells a story of life as it really is, with its minor dramas and major sorrows’ Le Figaro Littéraire
‘Clever, well-written, and brilliantly rises to the impossible challenge the author set himself: telling the story of uneventful lives ... Perhaps the most “Foenkinosien” novel of a unique writer who swims against the current of French literary trends. His style, whilst melancholic, is insuppressibly optimistic. If you had to file him in a manual of literary history, you might class him alongside the writers of the eighteenth century, but with the playfulness of Tintin’ L’Obs
‘It’s hard to resist getting caught up in the (literary) game when the experiment turns into one of the warm-hearted, wickedly funny comedies the Delicacy author is so good at ... A talented author who ... has always known how to reinvent himself’ Le Figaro
‘The book’s success lies in its comic reversal of roles: it’s the characters who lead the author around by the nose ... David Foenkinos is at his best in this playful novel’ Elle
‘There’s a message to be taken from Foenkinos’s trademark lovely, clever comedy – which is, of course, a fiction from start to finish: the writer is never a neutral observer’ Le Journal du Dimanche
‘A wonderful surprise – light, fizzy, at once uplifting and melancholic and, above all, filled with twists, role reversals and self-deprecation. The Delicacy author’s trademark is well and truly stamped on this book: a serious author who doesn’t take himself seriously ... With the lightest of touches, the author takes us behind the scenes of literary creation, and into the eternal nebula of human relationships’ L’Express
‘Playing with the rules of autofiction and family comedy, Foenkinos has created a multi-layered novel’ Le Parisien
