Get Well Soon by Marie-Sabine Roger, Frank Wynne

A joyful novel full of humanity from the author of Soft in the Head - a July 2016 Indie Next pick. Saved from drowning in Paris's River Seine, a sixty-something misanthrope finds himself stuck in a hospital bed for six weeks while he recovers. As he looks back on his life, the good and the bad, he makes some unexpected new acquaintances, and just when he thought life had no more suprises in store for him, he finds out he was wrong.... Editorial Reviews Review Humor on every page. A quirky book, it deals with deep psychological and philosophical truths in a lighthearted way. . . . Roger has a definite skill for making unlikable characters endearing. With Frank Wynne's fun translation, there's no doubt of Roger's comedic flair and the memorable voice of Jean-Pierre. -- Foreword Reviews The perfect pick-me-up... Not just funny, it has that indefinable something that makes it perfect for 'anytime' reading. -- Connexion A magical, tender and darkly humorous novel. Its pocket size makes it an ideal, heart-warming holiday read. -- The Lady I was hooked from the get go. -- Nudge-Book Witty, well observed and brilliantly written. -- Mature Times Praise for Soft in the Head: A tale of quiet hope and discovery... candid and refreshing. - Financial Times Unapologetically heartwarming... celebrates humanity, love, empathy, the sense of community and generosity of spirit. - Herald Magazine If you want summer reading escapism, you can't go wrong with this tender tale of an unlikely, love-filled friendship. - Big Issue Highly readable... Highly recommended. - Nudge Uplifting, bright and hopeful from the first page, this is a wonderful little book... Frank Wynne's translation is superb. - The Connexion One of the sweetest books that I have read this year... a true elegy to friendship... managing to be life-affirming without being saccharine... a book truly to treasure. - Girl with Her Head in a Book About the Author Born in Bordeaux in 1957, Marie-Sabine Roger has been writing books for both adults and children since 1989. Soft in the Head was made into a 2010 film, My Afternoons with Margueritte, directed by Jean Becker, starring Gerard Depardieu. Get Well Soon won the Prix des lecteurs de l'Express in 2012 and will be published by Pushkin Press in 2017. Frank Wynne is an award-winning translator from French and Spanish. He has won the IMPAC Award, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Scott Moncrieff Prize. He translated Marie-Sabine Roger's Soft in the Head. He has also translated a number of Spanish and Latin American authors, including Toms Eloy Martnez, Isabel Allende, Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Toms Gonzalez, whose In the Beginning Was the Sea is published by Pushkin Press. Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. I don't like to big myself up, but by the time I was, maybe, six or seven, I'd already had a crack at a bunch of things in terms of committing crimes and stuff that's illegal by law. Aggravated robbery, sexual assault and battery, blackmail and extortion... The sexual assault and battery involved snogging Marie- José Blanc. She kept her teeth clenched so I didn't exactly get very far. But it's the thought that counts. I'd commit aggravated robbery every Saturday after rugby: I'd blag sweets and stuff from the littler kids. I'd smack them about a bit in the changing rooms. Sometimes I'd show mercy to one of them. I've got a bit of Robin Hood in me. If you want to know about the extortion, just ask my brother. He used me as a bad example with his kids when they were young. Don't grow up like your uncle, or you'll have me to deal with. In my defence, I have to say that if he had nothing to be ashamed of, he wouldn't have emptied his piggy bank and handed me the cash. To guilt-trip someone, they have to be guilty. People called me The Terror. I thought that was pretty cool! I felt like I was destined for greatness. Back then, there were five and a bit of us living at home: my parents, my kid brother and me, pépé Jean and my dead mémé Ginou. My paternal grandparents had died in a dumb accident when my father was only eight, refusing to give way, it was my grandmother's fault, she never saw the point of stop signs. My father was brought up by his grandparents, his mother's parents: pépé Jean, still very much alive and kicking at the time I'm talking about, and mémé Ginou in her cremation urn out in the garage. I found it difficult to imagine how he must have felt, heading back to school the day of the accident, when he realized his folks were never coming home again. At the time, he could have thought he was finally free to live his life: no more bare-arse whipping for every little slip-up. Freedom. Total freedom. But listening to him talk about his childhood, I could tell that there are some kinds of freedom which fuck up your life more surely than a whole bunch of restrictions. Based on that, it didn't seem all that tempting, getting to be an orphan. I was quite fond of my parents, despite the fact that they were parents, with all the shortcomings that implies authority-wise. I was particularly fond of my father. I thought he was well cool, and not just because he had biceps thicker than most people's thighs. He was a strong guy, in every sense. Feet firmly planted in his size elevens. He had no shortage of opinions, though he didn't have much else. He was a bigmouth, a bruiser, but the kind of guy who had to get out the hankies at weddings and christenings and called my mother my little love bundle and didn't give a toss if people laughed, and was never afraid to say to her I love you. The man I most probably wanted to be. Even as a little kid, I could tell the power he had over people from the way they would always say to me: Oh, your father! Your father... He's really somebody! He was so good at being somebody that, next to him, I felt like nobody. Personally, I would have preferred a father who was a bit more ordinary. It would have made it easier to leave the nest. The worst thing about it was that I was the eldest, I was the standard-bearer. My brother brought himself up without bothering anyone, he was blessed. He was the youngest, the second child. The perpetual runner-up in the human race. I was the one they were pinning their hopes on. I still remember the way they looked at us, our neighbours, our cousins, and every man jack. The sliding glance from my-father-the-hero to his snot-nosed-shit-stirring brat. The sad, incredulous faces that silently said: How is it even possible? How can a guy like this father a kid like that? I probably worked out pretty early that I could never fill my father's boots and in order to survive I'd have to find some different footwear. I made every effort to be as much of a pain in the arse as possible and the most creative arsehole. Unfortunately, I had no real vices: for all my pretence at being a hoodlum, underneath I was a sweet kid. I wished I could be a Mafioso, a bad guy, a bastard. Actually, I was an arse-wipe. A two-bit moron with no ambition. And to top it all, my father would always lay a hand on my shoulder and say: He's a complete dunce, but he's a good kid. I'm sure he'll go far anyway... That was probably his way of showing he believed in me. But to my ears anyway sounded a lot like a despairing in spite of everything. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then. And if I didn't drown, I'd have to say I came pretty close. A few days ago, I was fished out of the Seine just in the nick of time. Two feet from the bank, to be precise, but that's more than far enough to sink into the mud and float to the surface a couple of weeks later, limp and soggy as the hunks of bread people throw to the ducks. They cleared out my bronchial tubes, put various bits of me in plaster. I had clearly ricocheted off the bridge. Botched suicide, drunken binge, mugging? Everyone had a theory. I was in a coma, so I could hardly voice an opinion. I woke up in intensive care with multiple trauma, which sounds pretty impressive, watched over by a concernedlooking cop. The sort of kid my father might have spared, even on a day of political unrest. He was a young guy, a decent sort, with huge, sad antelope eyes and a three-day beard he'd probably been growing for three months. He seemed completely overawed. My charisma, obviously. But maybe the chest drain, the oxygen mask and all the huge tangle of wires to keep me monitored had something to do with it too. This junior cop was a young thirty-five, he had a black leather jacket and a black leather notebook with the face of Chewbacca printed on the spine. He could have been my son, if I'd ever procreated. When I opened my eyes, I did it like a drowning man desperately trying to catch his breath. Then again, I had drowned, or as good as, so that probably explains it. I wondered what I was doing here, feeling a vague uneasiness over the general anaesthesia and the unpleasant sensation of not knowing where I began and ended. Part of my mind was panicked, racing in every direction, trying to get the lie of the land, where the fuck am I? Am I still in one piece? Can I move? The other part could not tear itself from the face of this strange guy leaning over me, too close, who was whispering so low that I could hardly hear a thing. The words seemed to come from far away, his voice sounded weird, much too slow. Eventually, I managed to catch the phrase: ... any idea what might have happened to you? Because, right now, we've made no progress in our investigation... Then, studying the oxygen mask, he added: Just a yes or no will do. Do you remember what happened? I dimly shook my head, just enough to set the ceiling spinning and the mattress lurching. Sorry. I had no idea how I'd got there. He asked me another question, one that took some time to percolate. Before I closed my eyes, I shook my head again. No: I had not tried to put an end to my life. I've no wish to kill myself. Time will take care of that bit of business.