Shelf Control is a feature where bloggers pick an unread book from our shelves and talk about it a little. It's supposed to be a Wednesday thing but I have French Movie Mercredi on Wednesdays already, so. Shelf Control is hosted at BookshelfFantasies.com
I bought The American Fiancée, by Eric Dupont (translated from the French by Peter McCambridge) at Symposia Bookstore, the used bookstore in my town, in March of this year.
Why I Want to Read It:
First of all it's a French-Canadian novel and I don't see many of those come through. Secondly it was blurbed by Patrick DeWitt and Justin Trudeau and described as "an unholy marriage of John Irving and Gary Shteyngart and Elizabeth McCracken... a big, bold, wildly ambitious novel that introduces a dynamic new voice to contemporary literature."
Over the course of the twentieth century, three generations of the funny, touching and wholly unpredictable Lamontagne family will weather love, jealousy, revenge, death... until they finally confront the secrets of their complicated pasts.
So it's an intergenerational story, which I love, and it's French-Canadian, which is unusual, and it's a big thick chunkster that will take me a good long time to dig into, also a plus, and it's got accolades and promising comparisons to writers I love. What could possibly go wrong? Fun fact: the copy I have came with a bonus "BookBill" like a Broadway playbill that outlines the story like an opera. Adorbs!
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