Upon hearing the news that the charismatic actor Gene Wilder had passed, I found myself surrounded by stories and interviews online that served to tell me that Gene had written a few novels.
Purely out of nostalgia and curiosity did I purchase this little novel. Curiosity only took me so far as to leave it sitting on a pile of books to be read. For almost a year. Cut to today where I began it this morning, and finished it this same day's afternoon.
Immediately I was gripped by my own memories of the actor's slower and more casual way of eloquently speaking with every written word in this little novella spoken in the same voice. Our hero, Paul Peachy, was a role for Gene that he simply never played. At times you get hints of the characters he's portrayed throughout his career, and comical little elements that were perhaps intended, or just happenstance to the story. What I found in reading My French Whore is that I was able to watch a film that was never made, but played without flaw.
As this is a short novel, only about 150 pages, it reads quickly and simply. In the modern age of bulky novels with condensed fonts and stuffed content, it was a pleasure to read something that not only had the breadth within its pages to let the words breath, but the same open air to the story that allowed it to compel, and drive a reader onward. No it was not a woven complex story that had me wondering the whole time just what was going on, this was a story that never left you wondering what was next, but had you stationary on the moment, enjoying each along with Peachy, until the novella ends. Perfectly. Simply.
I'll say this, though, there are three small errors, two of them being editor slips where the wrong word was used, and one where our hero disclosed information that was apparently between the pages that would have helped explain a certain moment better had it been written. Nothing that detracts, it was just odd briefly at the beginning.
Gene will be missed. We will always have his characters from films and now his novels which will play like lost films now discovered. This is a perfect and simple little story. I'll read it again and again until my own days come to an end.
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