Voice Over: A Novel (French Voices (Seven Stories Press))

Finalist for Best Translated Book of 2008 by the Hermeneutic Circle French Voices Award A lonely young woman works as an announcer in Paris's gare du Nord train station. Obsessed with a man attached to another woman, she wanders through the world of dinner parties, shopping excursions, and chance sexual encounters with a sense of haunting expectation. As something begins to happen between her and the man she loves, she finds herself at a crossroads, pitting her desire against her sanity. This smashing debut novel sparkles with mordant humor and sexy charm. The nameless Parisian female narrator works at the Gare du Nord train station announcing arrival and departure times. With little connection to her coworkers and the harried travelers who throng the station, she is hardly more than a disembodied voice. The job perfectly complements her emotional state. She is obsessed with a married man who scarcely notices her, and she often finds herself at the mercy of strange men, including a transvestite entertainer, a North African drug dealer, and a psychiatric intern with a bondage fetish. She finally makes a connection with the man she loves, but things do not go smoothly, and she seems headed for either a breakdown or a breakthrough.--From Booklist