Par Avion

Priority – Iselin C. Hermann, (G. Forester, Translator)

       The library I frequent had a display for “epistolary novels” a few months back.  This is one of those terms that I know I should know, but often forget, so my attempt to  decipher the meaning from the presence of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and the Danish author Iselin C. Hermann’s Priority came up with nothing.  Yeah…apparently I need to work on my vocab, since they’re novels done in the form of letters or correspondence.  Who knew?

       Priority was one of those novels present and I was stuck by the cover’s par avion sicker and that the book sort-of resembled a international mail envelope…and there was a women laying seminude on the cover didn’t hurt drawing my attention to the book.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but found the cover interesting and the novel a quick read at under 150 pages, and decided to give it a try….    

    

               And I am so happy that I did!  Hermann’s first book is the tale told through letters and postcards of an unlikely, yet engrossing romance.  Delphine, a young Danish women, sends a quick postcard to the Jean-Luc, a married French artist who created a favorite artwork Delphine happens one day to view on display.  This short postcard begins the back and forth correspondence between artist and art-lover.   Slowly learning more about each other in the back and forth of letters, their exchanges become more personal, verging at times on erotic until blossoming into an affair of words, making the reader wonder if they’ll one day meet and what should happen if they do.   

            Rarely do books surprise me as much as this one did.  For a first novel, it is an incredibly compelling read and an instant favorite all the way through to the ending.  I’m not sure I can rave enough about it.  I've read just about 30 books so far in 2010 and this is arguably thus far one of my favorites.

Rating 5 of 5.

And, yes this was posted on August 9, 2010 at 11:12 AM.  8/9/10 11:12