Review of FRENCH EXIT
Not the movie!! so very much better ... so very much fun
I rarely laugh when I read. I believe a literate comic novel is as elusive in the literary world as a good comedy is in film. They both suffer from sustainability and credibility. It is almost impossible to maintain comic consistency over two hours or two hundred pages. Length is the undoing of comedy. The longer it extends the more likely its credibility collapses. For this reason, the great cinematic comedies are so often love stories that will take control of the narrative in the end providing some life saving meaning and shape. A comic novel only works when it is dances atop a set of more serious issues that gradually reveal the purpose of the whole exercise. The World According to Garp and Bonfire of the Vanities are particularly good examples. The seriousness of the former is one’s interpersonal relationships with its complex characters while the latter is embedded in satirizing an unhinged society. All of this serves as a compliment to just how good French Exit is. It helps that it is short. It helps that it is increasingly moving as it reaches its not unexpected end. It is so much better than the film that I feel sorry that it has been tarnished by its adaptation. DeWitt’s story is hilarious throughout. The main character, Frances, is unforgettably wonderful and awful in equal measure but is almost shone up by a cat. DeWitt wrote The Sisters Brothers, another darker but still amusing novel set in the American West which I very much recommend along with its possibly superior film adaptation.
French Exit
Patrick deWitt
2018 236 pages