Even as a child, he loved dictionaries. Especially the Petit Larousse, with its illustrations. A red book with an extra-tough cloth cover, a genuine Bible. Not very big on sports, he spent hours reading definitions that seemed like riddles. It took some time for him to notice the pink line that cut the book in two, and even more to realize that the pink line was made of pink pages, filled with Latin phrases.
'The Pink Pages' tells the story of several years in the narrator’s life. A shy young man, a good student, he perceives the world through the prism of the Greek and Latin texts he devours and the New Wave films he watches. Which is-to-say that he’s a bit of a loner who always feels slightly out of step…
Each chapter of this novel has a Latin quote from the pink pages for a title. A quote that introduces the plot and constitutes the fragile connecting thread of a life the narrator finds ever more disappointing, a life in which he never actually chooses anything – unless it’s by default. Yet the end of the novel still opens onto the beginning of a new era: our hero, freed from melancholy and the weight of the past – the weight of the pink pages – takes a decisive step towards the modern world...
An exquisitely composed novelistic debut, The Pink Pages evokes the confusion of a vocationless young man, with elegant humor.
The trials and tribulations of a young man who tries, not without humor, to find meaning for his life.