03: A Novel

By Jean-Christophe Valtat

Book Overview

"From the bus stop across the street, it was hard to tell, but suddenly I understood, seeing the passengers in the van that picked her up every morning, that she was slightly retarded."

A precocious teenager in a French suburb finds himself powerfully, troublingly drawn to the girl he sees every day on the way to school. As he watches and thinks about her, his daydreams--full of lyrics from Joy Division and the Smiths, fairy tales, Flowers for Algernon, sexual desire and fear, loneliness, rage for escape, impatience to grow up--reveal an entire adolescence. And this fleeting erotic obsession, remembered years later, blossoms into a meditation on what it means to be a smart kid, what it means to be dumb, and what it means to be in love with another person.

03 is a book about young love like none you have ever read. It marks the English-language debut of a unique French writer--one of the great stylists of his generation.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374100217
• ISBN13: 9780374100216
• Release Date: June 2010
• Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.6" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

If Holden Caulfield had read Jean-Paul Satre

For a novella this book took a long time for me to read. There is zero plot in this book, just the navel-gazing of an adolescent male. Thought I would love it - I didn't. I don't normally leave negative reviews, but I made an exception here. Turgid.