I'm Off And One Year

Winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, 'I'm Off' takes its title from Felix Ferrer's parting words to his wife. In what we presume to be the early stages of a mid-life crisis, he embarks on an adventure to the Arctic circle to hunt for the Inuit treasures trapped on a ghost ship, enjoying the advantages of a bachelor's life along the way. In doing so he abandons the security of his comfortable habits as a mid-league Parisian art dealer. For all the conventional elements in his modern tableau, Echenoz is not quite pursuing the common-or-garden variety 'ageing bachelor on safari' character study. Instead, he has a great deal of fun with the literary modes of that familiar genre. The rhythm of his prose ticks along with deceptive regularity and then swerves suddenly at high speed through interesting digressions, penetrating analyses and sparklingly evocative descriptions. The narrator addresses himself directly to the reader and subtly blurs the distinctions between fact and fiction. Like a more accessible Italo Calvino, Echenoz supplies a steady drip of avant-garde ideas without completely turning our heads around, effectively tempting us with a literary utopia of post-modern 'what if' ideas in sharply pressed sheep's clothing. The companion story, 'One Year', is a sly and somewhat contrived fable from the perspective of one of Felix's women, Victoire, who also departs on an adventure to an opposite world after discovering an apparently dead Felix beside her one morning. Again, Echenoz delights in mocking conventional modes while taking care not to distress his readers too much. (Kirkus UK)