Reviews

Palafox by Éric Chevillard

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lmrising's review against another edition

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funny slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

briancrandall's review against another edition

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4.0

And then it is time to gather Palafox into his cage. The ornithologist grabs him by one paw, the other claw crushes his hand. He lets go. Free, Palafox hops into the gutter. In the water, he gets his sea legs immediately — helped along by the current, he soon reaches a manhole, he lets himself be sucked down, head first, at the risk of blemishing his magisterial antlers. [39]

Nothing frightens him, neither the scarecrows in the fields, nor the aluminum ribbons in the apricot trees, not the little owls crucified to the fences, not the cries of buzzards or kites broadcast uninterrupted over loudspeakers — to complete the illusion the cries seem to come from the pumpkins themselves. Palafox remains elusive. A few dogs from the farms dispatched to pursue his scent return rabid and have to be destroyed. Now we barely get a glimpse of him if that, sometimes a red shadow, a silver shimmer, a brown shape which leaps from the ground, shaking his little pink hands like an impudent marionette, or a green tail which slides silently between stones. We immediately grab a stick, you name it, a sachet, a scythe, we rush, but are too late, again too late, the black dot on the horizon, the white dot at the zenith, Palafox remains out of reach. [46]

shimmer's review against another edition

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5.0

It's exceptionally hard to describe Palafox in any way that does justice to the book, or gives a true sense of the experience reading it. In a nutshell—better, in this case: in an eggshell—it's about a strange creature appearing on a family's breakfast table and taking over their lives and their story. But the plot's not the point here. The animal, Palafox, sometimes seems like a bird and at others a jellyfish and still others a dragon or dog. Sometimes he's huge and sometimes he's tiny, growing and shrinking even in the course a single paragraph or page. Everything else in the story is equally slippery: it's a romance, a hunting story, a war story, a family drama, etc., and the way Chevillard's language (via Wyatt Mason's translation) circles back on and rewrites itself constantly. It's the pleasure of all that, just the sheer joy of reading this book, that's hard to describe, because while there are any number of novels about strange creatures, monsters, and the like (a favorite subject of mine), there are a few if any others in which the playfulness of subject and style come together so smoothly as they do here.

cariannbradley's review against another edition

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2.0

Picked this up at random in a bookstore years ago. I respect the very interesting writing style, but it wasn’t for me.

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