This is one of the more bizarre love triangle stories I've read. ( )

Unfortunately, I feel that this short book is one that would be easily spoiled by sharing too much. The protagonist is a doctoral student who is doing a dissertation on an author, Paul Michel. Michel has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and is living is days out in an institution. To reveal more plot (in my opinion) would deprive the reader of the unfolding of the tale, but I will say a few things.

First, the story starts slowly, and seems like nothing much at all in terms of a plot. But the more I read, the more I felt truly sucked in by the story, and I couldn't put it down for the final quarter.

There are many interesting themes for such a small book, but in some ways it is a love letter to readers, highlighting the critical role a reader (real or imagined) plays to a writer. And, yet in other ways, it is a tribute to love in general.

For some reason, it really reminded me of [b:The Bell Jar|6514|The Bell Jar|Sylvia Plath|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1473890514s/6514.jpg|1385044] and also a tiny bit of [a:J.D. Salinger|819789|J.D. Salinger|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1288777679p2/819789.jpg] in the way the characters are drawn.

Recommended for lovers of literary fiction . . .the slow build may make others impatient. On the flip side, it's very short. ( )

Die Germanistin von Patricia Duncker ist ein intensives, spannendes und stellenweise humorvolles Buch. Ein geheimnisvolles und tiefes Buch.
Es handelt sich um einen Doktoranden, der sich mit dem französischen Schriftsteller Paul Michel beschäftigt. Angefacht von einer mysteriösen Germanistin entwickelt er eine Leidenschaft, die ihn auf die Suche nach dem Schriftsteller veranlasst.
Er überwindet die Widerstände der Institutionen und beginnt den seit 1984 im Irrenhaus verwahrten Paul Michel zu besuchen. Ihre Gespräche über Wahn, Literatur, das Leben sind brilliant.
Der Roman ist fliessend geschrieben und man ist angezogen vom Erzählstrom, so dass man das Buch nicht aus der Hand zu legen vermag. ( )

Overrated. The relation between reader and writer as a theme does not particularly interest me. It is not about Foucault in any obvious way. What is interesting though is the schizophrenia of Paul Michel. It reminds me of Kierkegaard and the way existentialism is analysed in The denial of death by Ernest Becker cq Colin Wilson The Outsider. ( )

Not really sure why this is on the 1001 books list. Didn’t grab me. Seemed a bit too much like navel-gazing for the Cambridge set (e.g. “we went to Browns for lunch” – oh did we now? It’s not what it was, though) and littered with characters who are a just far enough removed from everyday reality to actual relate to insanity.

So, there’s this guy whose written some novels and he’s a bit like a cross between Jack Kerouac and Holden Caulfield, an anarchist homosexual who has to be French (I mean, could he be anything else?) And this undergrad at Cambridge falls in love with his writing which is really a metaphor for falling in love with the novelist and so he hears that no one has a clue where he is now and it turns out he’s been sectioned and is in some asylum outside Paris. With the thinly veiled excuse of research trip, off trots our star-struck student on a quest that is as much a search for self as it is a search for other.

And they strike up this relationship and it’s all a bit coming-of-age, even though this undergrad is supposedly not only an adult by this point but also part of the Oxbridge elite. Anyway, the inevitable happens and some of the anarchy rubs off on the impressionable protagonist but before it can all end in tears in one way, it ends in tears in another way.

It all seemed a bit predictable to me and I would definitely NOT follow the advice of the Observer review that says “If you buy one book make it Hallucinating Foucault…” No, really, don’t. This is an okay novel that really doesn’t “explore with consummate mastery the passionate relationship between reader and writer.” If you want to really see “consummate mastery” of that topic, see If on a winter’s night a traveller… ( )