GUY BEDOS

While he is a film maker and not an actor or stand up comedian, the narrator of Le jour et l'heure looks like Guy Bedos on 2 drops of venom and 2 pinches of arsenic. His success is behind him; he holds this against the whole world, is not young any longer and thinks about putting an end to his life. His only responsibility is to choose the day and the time. But he has not taken into account that by leaving these pages expressing his anger and resentment, his suicidal tendencies and his last loving thoughts, his children will each have the opportunity to discover them, to read and to respond to them. For his first novel, as caustic and politically incorrect as could be expected, or at least hoped, Bedos has chosen to use several voices: a father's, his son's and his daughters'. Yes this endearing and insufferable character, so terribly lucid about the world around him, near and far, possesses the tone and force of his author; but also of course, and above all, the real despair of a New York Jew who was born by accident in Algeria before the last war.