Vernon Subutex - Supernormal Reads

Published May 18, 2016 by Penguin Random House.

ISBN:: 978-84-397-3143-6

(1 review)

From the provocative writer and filmmaker Virginie Despentes comes volume one of her acclaimed trilogy of novels, Vernon Subutex--short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize. But who is Vernon Subutex?

Vernon Subutex was once the proprietor of Revolver, an infamous music shop in Paris, where his name was legend throughout Paris. By the 2000s, however, with the arrival of the internet and the decline in CD and vinyl sales, his shop is struggling, like so many others. When it closes, Subutex finds himself with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Before long, his savings are gone, and when the mysterious rock star who had been covering his rent suddenly drops dead of a drug overdose, Subutex finds himself launched on an epic saga of couch-surfing, boozing, and coke-snorting before finally winding up homeless. Just as he resigns himself to life as a panhandler, a throwaway comment he once made …

From the provocative writer and filmmaker Virginie Despentes comes volume one of her acclaimed trilogy of novels, Vernon Subutex--short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize. But who is Vernon Subutex?

Vernon Subutex was once the proprietor of Revolver, an infamous music shop in Paris, where his name was legend throughout Paris. By the 2000s, however, with the arrival of the internet and the decline in CD and vinyl sales, his shop is struggling, like so many others. When it closes, Subutex finds himself with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Before long, his savings are gone, and when the mysterious rock star who had been covering his rent suddenly drops dead of a drug overdose, Subutex finds himself launched on an epic saga of couch-surfing, boozing, and coke-snorting before finally winding up homeless. Just as he resigns himself to life as a panhandler, a throwaway comment he once made on Facebook takes the internet by storm.

The word is out: Subutex is lugging around a bunch of VHS tapes shot by that same dead rock musician--his last recordings on this earth. Soon a crowd of wild characters, from screen writers to social media groupies, from porn stars to failed musicians to random misfits, are hot on Vernon's trail . . . but Vernon is none the wiser.

1 edition

mark reviewed Vernon Subutex by Virginie Despentes

A Dantean - But Surprisingly Tender - Descent Through The Minds and Lives of Parisians

5 stars

Vernon Subutex is a charmer - handsome despite being on the wrong side of 40, easy to get along with, and surprisingly attractive to women. He has also, at the start of "Vernon Subutext 1," spent the past two years unemployed and a virtual shut-in, licking his wounds after the demise of his legendary record store and the deaths of several close friends. The situation quickly changes when his old friend Alex Bleach, a past-it rock star who has been intermittently paying off Vernon's back rent, dies, and Vernon is almost immediately kicked out of his home. This begins a sort of Odyssey through Paris, into the lives and the points of view of the people who interact with Vernon - musicians-turned-middle-managers, retired pornstars, obsessive producers, erstwhile rock journalists, coked-up day traders, violent French nationalists. There is a MacGuffin of sorts - the tapes that Alex left with Vernon, which …

Vernon Subutex is a charmer - handsome despite being on the wrong side of 40, easy to get along with, and surprisingly attractive to women. He has also, at the start of "Vernon Subutext 1," spent the past two years unemployed and a virtual shut-in, licking his wounds after the demise of his legendary record store and the deaths of several close friends. The situation quickly changes when his old friend Alex Bleach, a past-it rock star who has been intermittently paying off Vernon's back rent, dies, and Vernon is almost immediately kicked out of his home. This begins a sort of Odyssey through Paris, into the lives and the points of view of the people who interact with Vernon - musicians-turned-middle-managers, retired pornstars, obsessive producers, erstwhile rock journalists, coked-up day traders, violent French nationalists. There is a MacGuffin of sorts - the tapes that Alex left with Vernon, which may reveal long-simmering secrets or jealousies or might just contain him talking about ambient music for hours - but the book isn't as concerned with that as you might think. The real subject of "Vernon Subutext" is Paris, with Vernon our sort of unwitting, louche, misogynist Virgil, who slips in and out of the narrative as the point of view switches between him and the people whose paths he crosses. These points of view - and Vernon's own - are incredible, well-observed and tender even when writing from the point of view of a domestic abuser or a racist screenwriter. I'm looking forward to starting the next volume - after, I think, a little break to read something a bit more calming.