How''s the Pain?

How's the Pain? is an off-kilter, blackly comic novel about an unlikely duo of a soon-to-be-retired assassin and a deadbeat young man, from the 'slyly funny' [Sunday Times] Pascal Garnier.
'Deliciously dark ... painfully funny' New York Times
Death is Simon's business. And now the ageing vermin exterminator is preparing to die. But he still has one last job down on the coast, and he needs a driver.
Bernard is twenty-one. He can drive and he's never seen the sea. He can't pass up the chance to chauffeur for Simon, whatever his mother may say. As the unlikely pair set off on their journey, Bernard soon finds that Simon's definition of vermin is broader than he'd expected ...
Veering from the hilarious to the horrific, this offbeat story from master stylist Pascal Garnier is at heart an affecting study of human frailty.

Info autore

Pascal Garnier, who died in March 2010, was a talented novelist, short story writer, children’s author and painter. From his home in the mountains of the Ardèche, he wrote fiction in a noir palette with a cast of characters drawn from ordinary provincial life. Though his writing is often very dark in tone, it sparkles with quirkily beautiful imagery and dry wit. Garnier’s work has been likened to the great thriller writer, Georges Simenon.

Emily Boyce is a translator and editor. She was shortlisted for the French Book Office New Talent in Translation Award in 2008, the French-American Translation Prize in 2016, and the Scott Moncrieff Prize in 2021. She lives in London.  

Riassunto

How's the Pain? is an off-kilter, blackly comic novel about an unlikely duo of a soon-to-be-retired assassin and a deadbeat young man, from the 'slyly funny' [Sunday Times] Pascal Garnier.

'Deliciously dark ... painfully funny' New York Times 

Death is Simon's business. And now the ageing vermin exterminator is preparing to die. But he still has one last job down on the coast, and he needs a driver.

Bernard is twenty-one. He can drive and he’s never seen the sea. He can’t pass up the chance to chauffeur for Simon, whatever his mother may say. As the unlikely pair set off on their journey, Bernard soon finds that Simon’s definition of vermin is broader than he’d expected ... 

Veering from the hilarious to the horrific, this offbeat story from master stylist Pascal Garnier is at heart an affecting study of human frailty.

Prefazione

• Co-op available
• Finished copies available in May 2020
• Inclusion in Advance Access program
• Submit for galley box and follow up with booksellers, aiming for Indie Next nominations
• Media mailing of advance reading copies to a wide range of book reviewers at national and local media, including trade journals, newspapers, magazines, websites, zones, literary blogs, magazines, newspapers and French‐American foundations and organizations.
• Social media campaign ‐ online giveaways, competition and e‐mail campaign
• Goodreads and LibraryThing giveaways
• EBook simultaneous publication and marketing, including retailer promotions
• Promotion through: www.gallicbooks.com and author blog
• Big focus on crime magazines, use the Banville introduction to create more interest. Crime podcasts.
• Pitch Garnier retrospective features. New York Review of Books to run piece on Garnier's oeuvre in late February 2020.
• Promote as part of new Editions Gallic series. John Banville or another high-profile fan to attend crime lit festival to talk about the legacy and influence of Garnier’s work.

Testo aggiuntivo

Praise for Pascal Garnier 

'At once extremely violent, irresistibly funny, and inexplicably moving, in the subtle way that only genuine art can manage to be' John Banville, New York Review of Books

'Garnier's take on the frailty of life has a bracing originality' Sunday Times

‘Small but perfectly formed darkest noir fiction told in spare, mordant prose … Recounted with disconcerting matter-of-factness, Garnier’s work is surreal and horrific in equal measure’ The Guardian

'Wonderful ... properly noir' Ian Rankin

'Garnier plunges you into a bizarre, overheated world, seething death, writing, fictions and philosophy. He’s a trippy, sleazy, sly and classy read' A. L. Kennedy 

'Combines a sense of the surreal with a ruthless wit' The Observer 

'Tense, strange, disconcerting and slyly funny' Sunday Times 

'A brilliant exercise in grim and gripping irony, it makes you grin as well as wince' Sunday Telegraph 

'A mixture of Albert Camus and JG Ballard' FT 

'Bleak, often funny and never predictable' The Observer 

'A master of the surreal noir thriller – Luis Buñuel meets Georges Simenon' TLS

‘A jeu d’esprit of hard-boiled symbolism, with echoes of Raymond Chandler, T.S. Eliot and the Marx Brothers’ Wall Street Journal

'Brief, brisk, ruthlessly entertaining . . . Garnier makes bleakness pleasurable' NPR

 'Ennui, dislocation, alienation, estrangement – these are the colours on Garnier’s palette. His books are out there on their own: short, jagged and exhilarating' Stanley Donwood 

Relazione

Praise for Pascal Garnier
'At once extremely violent, irresistibly funny, and inexplicably moving, in the subtle way that only genuine art can manage to be' John Banville, New York Review of Books
'Garnier's take on the frailty of life has a bracing originality' Sunday Times
'Small but perfectly formed darkest noir fiction told in spare, mordant prose ... Recounted with disconcerting matter-of-factness, Garnier's work is surreal and horrific in equal measure' The Guardian
'Wonderful ... properly noir' Ian Rankin
'Garnier plunges you into a bizarre, overheated world, seething death, writing, fictions and philosophy. He's a trippy, sleazy, sly and classy read' A. L. Kennedy
'Combines a sense of the surreal with a ruthless wit' The Observer
'Tense, strange, disconcerting and slyly funny' Sunday Times
'A brilliant exercise in grim and gripping irony, it makes you grin as well as wince' Sunday Telegraph
'A mixture of Albert Camus and JG Ballard' FT
'Bleak, often funny and never predictable' The Observer
'A master of the surreal noir thriller - Luis Buñuel meets Georges Simenon' TLS
'A jeu d'esprit of hard-boiled symbolism, with echoes of Raymond Chandler, T.S. Eliot and the Marx Brothers' Wall Street Journal
'Brief, brisk, ruthlessly entertaining . . . Garnier makes bleakness pleasurable' NPR
'Ennui, dislocation, alienation, estrangement - these are the colours on Garnier's palette. His books are out there on their own: short, jagged and exhilarating' Stanley Donwood

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Pascal Garnier
• Con la collaborazione di: John Banville (Introduzione), Emily Boyce (Traduzione), Boyce Emily (Traduzione)
• Editore: Pushkin Press
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 03.11.2020
• EAN: 9781910477922
• ISBN: 978-1-910477-92-2
• Pagine: 176
• Serie: Editions Gallic
• Categorie: Narrativa > Gialli; FICTION / Thrillers / General, France, FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense, FICTION / Noir, Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999, Crime and mystery: hard-boiled crime, noir fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary, FICTION / Humorous / Dark Humor