Daniel Pennac

In the neighborhood of Belleville lives the Malaussène tribe, and with them a myriad of characters. Belleville is a Parisian periphery, ravaged by the postmodernist manias of architects, the stupidity of politicians, and the greed of speculators; but it is also a magical place, a sort of Sherwood Forest, where Robin Hood is Benjamin Malaussène and the Sheriff is embodied by those who seek to evict long-standing tenants to demolish the old buildings and erect new ones for corporate offices and the wealthy bourgeoisie. > If one day you ask me what happiness looks like, and you will ask me, I will answer: like here In Belleville, where it is possible to screen the last film in the history of cinema (a film destined to be destroyed afterward) in a forgotten theater, where it is possible to tattoo all the streets of Belleville onto a person's body as a living testament to the neighborhood. In Belleville there is also an illusionist, who makes you see things that are not there; in Belleville > angels, who at times grow bored, are drawn toward us by the warmth and the surging of feelings and are personified in a detective nun. The novel features countless characters and a wealth of intertwining events: murders, disappearances, love affairs, bizarre twists of fate, persecutions. At the center, hero-like, stands Benjamin Malaussène, a fixed point in a magic lantern, in a kaleidoscope full of lights and illusions. There is no real plot, and the novel is difficult to follow. I must confess that I was unable to read it to the end, having lost my way among so many characters and so many words. Yet perhaps this was the author's very purpose: to demonstrate that no rationality governs existence, and that everything unfolds along a tenuous boundary between reality and imagination. Why not read it? Quite frankly, it is deeply muddled and verbose.