Dead Dogs and Other Exciting News
Publisher
:
Éditions Le Dilettante
Parution date
:
2006
EAN
:
9782842631215
Description
Les chiens écrasés is the French expression for the stories journalists cover when they can't find anything better to write about. In this case, two journalists from Radar get a lead: a scandal has erupted in a small town when a homeless man fell ill after eating spoiled goods from a supermarket dumpster. The store’s owner has padlocked the garbage dumpsters behind the store to prevent the homeless from foraging there again. Enter the two reporters. Casa is a drinker and slacker; the narrator, Grand, a womanizer and a go-getter. They attack their story from two angles: the women, drink, and food, on the one hand, and the investigative work on the other. Their first interview is with Mademoiselle, a blonde bombshell who turns out to have been the principal whistle blower. Grand, the serial womanizer, unexpectedly discovers true love at first sight. Unable to imagine moving on without Mademoiselle in his life, he realizes he must find a way to prolong their stay in town, to have time to win her over. To do that, he begins to embellish the story of the homeless people, and the supermarket dumpsters, at the risk of inventing it.
This is a morality play about truth in reporting, and individual versus common good, told with Roubaudi's habitual down-trodden figures, and with a light and comic touch, all the more devastating when life, and loss, catch up with innocent horse-play and the quest for happiness.
Author
Ludovic Roubaudi : Ludovic Roubaudi is the author of two previous novels, Les Baltringues (Le Dilettante, 2002, Winner of the Eureggio Prize, and the Cinelect Prize, 2003), and Le 18 ( Le Dilettante, 2004, Film rights sold to La Boîte à images). He is published in seven other countries, among them Germany (Schirmer Graf), The Netherlands (De Geus), and Japan (Kobunsha).
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