Voice Over

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Céline Curiol’s first novel, Voice Over, written when the author was in her late twenties and published just after her thirtieth birthday in 2005, is a rare and unforgettable book, one of the most stirring literary debuts I’ve come across in recent years.

What distinguishes Curiol’s writing is its uncanny fluidity and masterful control over multiple stylistic effects. The reader is both inside and outside at the same time, immersed in the inner life of the central character and yet vividly aware of the world that surrounds her as she floats through an all-too-real present-day Paris, a city that presses down on her throughout the novel with all the force of a dream. The main thrust of the story concerns the adventures of this nameless young woman, but Curiol’s eye for detail is so sharp, so exact in its renderings of the world beyond her character’s skin, that even as the narrative concentrates on the actions of a single individual, we are simultaneously given a crystal-clear picture of French society at large — the new France, the France of the early twenty-first century. Much of the book’s mordant humor is lavished on the hypocrisy, irrationality, and outright absurdity of the social arrangements, class differences, and no-so-buried racism the heroine sees around her.

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