Felix Ferrer takes his leave of his wife and sets off on a daft odyssey to the Arctic, lured by the promise of abandoned antiques. It sounds interesting enough. But nothing is particularly straightforward in either Ferrer's cartoon world or in the strange void that passes for his mind. The English language translation of Echenoz's fourth novel, Cherokee, in the US in 1987 impressed sufficiently that the same translation by Mark Polizzotti was finally published in Britain four years later. It was high Absurd, fast-moving, ridiculous and clever enough not to try to be archly intellectual - the pitfall of so much French fiction. Drawing heavily from cinema, Cherokee triumphed through its laconic, offbeat tone and Echenoz's relentless eye for surreal description.
It is the kind of novel in which a duo of hopeless but polite private investigators named Ripert and Bock end up at the zoo. Attempting to look natural, Bock buys peanuts to feed to the monkeys "but the monkeys wanted no part of this; they dextrously threw them back between the bars, and it was Bock who had to eat them". Later, when the team messes up a raid on a suspect's house, Ripert is shot. Bock approaches the suspect: "My partner is wounded . . . perhaps I might borrow your telephone?" The request is refused and Bock is ordered out. "Of course," he replies, "I understand. We'll take care of it ourselves. Try to get up, Christian, I'll help you." This is the style of madness Echenoz specialises in. And it is very funny.
Admittedly I'm Off is not as zany as Cherokee and the narrative voice is somewhat different. Instead of the reporter-like tone of the earlier book, the observant narrator is openly amused at the carry on and cannot resist an array of snide asides. Ferrer, a Paris art dealer, is hardly the most likeable of central characters. There is a daunting half-heartedness about this middle-aged Romeo of sorts who can't stop looking at women though he doesn't really like them. And of course, yes, he has a heart condition. The novel takes a dangerously long while to gather itself, the first 50 pages are surprisingly forgettable - all the more so as this novel won the 1999 Prix Goncourt. Even allowing for the fact that literary prizes often get it wrong, most readers would be forgiven for thinking - "could a jury really get it this wrong?"
Suddenly, the narrative and the simple, if artfully shaky plot warm up. In the first of many crazy set pieces, our soon-to-be-divorced hero is struggling with the disadvantages of finding an available female just across the landing. Her perfume is too strong . . . it wobbles perilously on the crest between spikenard and sewer, it surfeits you as much as it assails you, arouses you as much as it asphyxiates you . . . Besides, it was so powerful a scent that Berangere [the woman] only had to call him on the phone for the odour to travel down the telephone wires and reconquer the apartment."
Having tracked down the missing antiques, Ferrer ships them to France and then sets about having them valued. This produces another comic encounter when the expert arrives with a female assistant who appears equally dependent on her cigarettes and her mobile phone. "Sonia seemed on one occasion to have got her accessories mixed up, speaking for two seconds to her packet of Bensons." Much of the comic effect is achieved through slightly slapstick visual touches and deadpan deliberation. Elsewhere, the baddie on a spree in Spain and enjoying the fruits of his scam goes shopping. "He knew enough Spanish to try on a pair of trousers in a boutique, but not enough to explain why he did not want them."
A frantic sexual tangle with Sonia ends when the nearby Babyphone explodes into action. Ferrer then goes into battle with the device in another highly cinematic comic sequence. As in Cherokee, Echenoz makes terrific use of walk-on characters. This time, it is a surly girl hitchhiker who makes a speech on the abuse of language before falling asleep in the car driven by none other than the villain.
HAVING passed out in the lobby of a bank, Ferrer comes to and discovers he has undergone triple bypass surgery. His first reaction is to assess his sexual possibilities with a beautiful stranger who has arrived to see how he is. "Ferrer felt from the outset that things were not going to work out between the two of them." As for the girl, who looks like a model, it seems to take a few seconds to remember she was once a high-level research medic. For all their fantasies, none of the characters appears to spend much time thinking. Even the smallest detail is noted. The Rue du 4Septembre is carefully described down to "the wall plaque in honour of a Free Frenchman fallen for his country at the age of nineteen (lest we forget)". Even the flatest dialogue is funny, mainly because it seems to consist of half-remembered lines from B-movies.
No, this zany offbeat jaunt belongs to neither the intense, hysterical school of French fiction, nor to the elite intellectual one. It certainly has less in common with the late great Georges Perec (1936-1982), who brilliantly balanced genius with humanity (although Echenoz does share his liking for lists), than it does at times to Raymond Queneau (1903-1979). I'm Off always remains on the likeable side of clever. Still as for prize-winning literary fiction - it sure says a lot about the Prix Goncourt and even more about contemporary French literature.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
