Waiting for Bojangles

January 15, 2019
A young French boy's adventures with his unpredictable parents.The nameless child narrator lives with his father, mother, and a pet crane dubbed "Mademoiselle Superfluous" in a French apartment crammed with a mountain of unopened mail, a TV crowned by a dunce cap, and a checkerboard-floored front hall. He's enchanted by the life his parents lead, even when they pull him from school in part because he keeps missing days so the family can go on vacation--"to heaven," his parents call it. And after the boy's father, George, leaves his job as a "garage opener" at his wife's insistence, the family enters into a seemingly limitless stretch of time in which they vacation in Spain, play Nina Simone's "Mr. Bojangles" on the record player, and mix umbrella-topped cocktails in relative bliss. But reality intrudes after a tax assessor shows up at their apartment to collect an unpaid balance. The mother, already "charmingly ignorant of the way the world work[s]," strays further from reality and toward increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior. As the mother's mental illness progresses and George and his son attempt to protect her from herself and others, the novel probes the painful and often futile lengths people will go to for those they love. Told partly in rhyme (and interspersed with excerpts from George's diary), Bourdeaut's debut is both a charming tale that revels in colorful detail and language and a heart-rending depiction of the brutal march of mental illness. Its part-rhyming structure almost always feels organic (only occasionally reading as cutesy or forced) and lends the narrative a sense of flow and momentum. But it's the irresistible, childlike sense of delight--even in the face of unimaginable sorrow--that renders the novel a genuinely enjoyable reading experience and one that sparks complex and conflicting emotions.A unique, evocative debut.

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Starred review from February 15, 2019
It is not difficult to detect an undercurrent of sadness beneath the joie de vivre that permeates this alternately delightful and melancholic first novel. Bourdeaut's Paris-set tale of the devastating impact of mental illness is made so much more compelling because he frames the story through the eyes of a schoolboy with impulsive and creative parents. This is an expert move as that constricted worldview propels the reader to connect the dots, to understand what exactly is going on behind the scenes, and therefore, to become the narrator's ally. As the story opens, the boy's unconventional parents live according to their own rules, with an exotic bird that gets full run of their Parisian apartment and a rising pile of unpaid bills; all the while, they host one long party after another. With chapters from the father's point of view interrupting the boy's, Bourdeaut gradually reveals how the mother's manic energy threatens to spiral out of control. The boy remembers that Nina Simone's mellow Mr. Bojangles was his mom's favorite song, which he describes as truly crazy, happy and sad at the same time. Much the same can be said of this layered novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2019

Debut In this international best seller, the young narrator lives in Paris with unconventional parents Louise and George, who eschew standard employment, dance endlessly to Nina Simone's "Mister Bojangles," and entertain a bevy of like-minded friends as they live life to the hilt. George calls Louise by a different name every day, and a crafty exotic bird named Mademoiselle Superfluous roams the premise. Such bliss can't last, as financial difficulties soon loom, but what's worse is Louise's fall into mental illness as the story moves from whacky to poignant. The narrative often falls into witty rhyme that mostly charms (kudos to the translator here). VERDICT At once delightfully whimsical and hugely touching; most readers will enjoy.

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