The Scapegoat
(DANIEL PENNAC)
Benjamin Malaussène works for a department store as a
professional scapegoat, looking so pitiful when customers come in with
complaints that they abandon them. When bombs start going off in the store,
however, it seems he may be scapegoat for that, too...
The Scapegoat is a light-hearted entertainment. Its plot has enough
twists and turns to keep one hooked ? and though it''s somewhat surreal and not
particularly plausible it doesn''t take itself seriously enough for that to be a
problem. Much of the entertainment comes from the menagerie of characters,
starting with Ben himself and the extraordinary family he heads, consisting of
five half-siblings (the result of their mother''s wanderlust) and a stinking,
epileptic dog. Then there is the statuesque investigative journalist with whom
Ben becomes involved, a Nazi-sympathizing bookseller, police inspector
Coudrier, and assorted other denizens of the Beleville Arab quarter of Paris in which The
Scapegoat is set.
One wonders how well Ian Monk has translated what must clearly have been
heavily idiomatic dialect in the original, but perhaps this is comparatively
easy for someone who has also translated Georges Perec.
Resumos Relacionados
- The Fairy Rifle
- The Immaculate Deception
- Intending To Hurt
- The Metamorphosis
- A Void
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