The protagonist of Carrère’s novella is a successful, happily married architect. One day he decides to surprise Agnes, his wife of five years, by shaving off his moustache. He waits for her reaction… which doesn’t come. When he presses her to comment about his new look, she insists that he never sported facial hair. At first, he is convinced that Agnes is playing some sort of elaborate joke on him, a perfectly reasonable explanation considering that she is somewhat of a pathological liar. But when friends, colleagues and casual acquaintances also fail to notice the disappearance of his moustache, things take a decidedly disturbing turn. The protagonist is drawn into a downward spiral of angst and paranoia, leading inexorably to tragedy.

Carrère’s The Moustache was first published in 1986 and is being reissued on Vintage in a translation by Lanie Goodman. The novella is based on one simple, surreal premise, developed obsessively in an imitation of the protagonist’s frame of mind. Carrère’s command of narrative tension is masterly. The story has a potential for dark comedy, but its effect is, instead, one of sheer terror. Carrère’s Class Trip which I recently read, is often described as a horror novella and I expressed my reservations about that classification. On the contrary, The Moustache is, in my view, clearly a horror story – its sense of existential dread a strange, unsettling mix of Poe and Camus.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-moustache-by-emmanuel-carrere.htm... ( )

Oi. I read nearly the entire book dreading the ending. And I was right. The end was horrific. Not a speck of bad writing, just the awfulness of where the mind can go. The questions left for you to decide are spot on. I felt in sync with both the main character and the wife at varying points in the story. I felt my mind settle on the solution that I could live with. Thankfully the author allowed that. ( )

The protagonist of Carrère’s novella is a successful, happily married architect. One day he decides to surprise Agnes, his wife of five years, by shaving off his moustache. He waits for her reaction… which doesn’t come. When he presses her to comment about his new look, she insists that he never sported facial hair. At first, he is convinced that Agnes is playing some sort of elaborate joke on him, a perfectly reasonable explanation considering that she is somewhat of a pathological liar. But when friends, colleagues and casual acquaintances also fail to notice the disappearance of his moustache, things take a decidedly disturbing turn. The protagonist is drawn into a downward spiral of angst and paranoia, leading inexorably to tragedy.

Carrère’s The Moustache was first published in 1986 and is being reissued on Vintage in a translation by Lanie Goodman. The novella is based on one simple, surreal premise, developed obsessively in an imitation of the protagonist’s frame of mind. Carrère’s command of narrative tension is masterly. The story has a potential for dark comedy, but its effect is, instead, one of sheer terror. Carrère’s Class Trip which I recently read, is often described as a horror novella and I expressed my reservations about that classification. On the contrary, The Moustache is, in my view, clearly a horror story – its sense of existential dread a strange, unsettling mix of Poe and Camus.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-moustache-by-emmanuel-carrere.htm... ( )

Una història tan poca-solta i tan banal que penses que difícilment pot donar lloc a una novel·la. Però la sinopsi et fa seguir endavant perquè penses que tard o d'hora la cosa arrancarà. Descripcions llarguíssimes, acció amb poc interès, i, finalment, constates que tenies raó, que la cosa no va enlloc. Una pèrdua de temps. ( )

Starts as quirky fun, morphs into a Hitchcock-style mystery/thriller and ends with one of the most distressing passages I've ever read. A brilliantly bizarre recommendation for a colleague that I'd happily pass on to others. ( )