My Life as Edgar by Dominique Fabre

Like all of Archipelago Books
output, My Life as Edgar is
physically a lovely book

I first came across Archipelago Books for the Afghanistani installment of my round the world challenge. They are a small press, putting out mainly translations of literary works; novels, poetry, and non-fiction. The book themselves are usually small and square, apparently a format popular in Italy. The paper is good quality, and the cover generally interesting and fitting for the book in question. Reading a book which is physically a bit different can be a double-edged sword. Obviously, books are some of the most beautiful items one can own, and a well made book is a thing of beauty. 

But...as a rule, anything which sits between the reader and the words themselves (even if that is the font the words are read in, chopping and changing fonts in a book is a pet hate of mine) has the potential to get in the way. The words of a novel want to travel between the brain of the author and that of the reader with as little distraction as possible. However, Archipelago have struck the balance about spot on. The book is well made, and different, but not so different that I spend time contemplating the actual book, rather than the prose.

Fabre looks unnervingly like
a French Woody Allen, and
there are similarities between
the works of the two 

There is very little about Dominique Fabre on the internet. It seems he is both a prolific writer, literary judge and teacher. He specialises in writing about people on the margins of society. My Life as Edgar was Fabre's second novel, published in the original French (Ma vie d'Edgar) in 1998. It took until 2023 for an English translation, with Anna Lehmann, a New Yorker, doing the honours.

There isn't much in the way of plot, which, to be honest, I expected. My Life as Edgar is very much a slice of life novel, following the young and self-proclaimed 'not-all-there' titular Edgar, in 1960s Paris and rural France.

But when a novel lacks a plot, it needs something else to drive it forward - anything else, which we just don't get here. The last installment of this blog (Vernon Subutex) also featured a novel set in Paris with very little plot. But Vernon had characters with charisma and (as we are in France) a certain je ne sais quoi. The writing sparkled, and reading was a joy.

Edgar is all a bit more...bland. Yeah, I get that Fabre is putting a spotlight on the marginal, suburban and uninteresting types, holding a mirror up to the work-a-day reader. But the trouble is, they are uninteresting. 

Oui, oui, Paris

Edgar (the character) has a slow, plodding way about him, he is largely unreactive to the troubles life throws at him. And this all gets a bit samey. The prose reflects the drab Formica and polyester existence of its protagonists and the whole thing winds up being... suburban and uninteresting.

This is not to say the novel doesn't throw up some interesting questions. Edgar repeats time and again that he is 'not quite all there' a phrase which is often said about him, and which he has taken to the heart of his existence. But is it true? There are passages where Edgar sees more than others. And when he does fail to grasp something which others deem obvious, is this simply because he is living up to the expectations set of him? We only ever see Edgar through his own perception of himself, but more than this, it is his own interpretation of others' perceptions. This raises questions of how we see others, and how we see ourselves. We never get a balanced view of either Edgar or the other characters, and while this may be an exaggeration, is it really different to our own view of our world?

When all is said and done though, despite the existential questions, I found My Life as Edgar just a bit dull. ★★☆☆☆