A review by cbendixe
Things: A Story of the Sixties and a Man Asleep by Georges Perec

2.0

The first novel in this book, Things: A Story of the Sixties, outlines a 20-something couple in 1960s Paris. They are incredibly materialistic, and the only interesting thing that they really do in the whole book is decide to temporarily move to Tunisia. Which of course they hate. I wish something else of note had happened, because these two characters were pretty crazy (in an interesting way).

I did not finish the second novel, A Man Asleep. The first half describes a college (or maybe grad school?) student's descent into depression. But there is apparently no reason for how the depression comes about, and chemical assistance is never discussed (not that it's always effective, but it might have made this guy more...I don't know, interesting? I know I've used that word too much already in this review, but I'm at a loss--I was really uninterested in this book).

I know there is a lot more to these philosophical novels, and I'm sure that I missed a lot. But for now I'm going to lay off of French novels.