Voice Over

By Cline Curiol and Céline Curiol

Book Overview

Finalist for Best Translated Book of 2008 by the Hermeneutic Circle French Voices Award A lonely young woman works as an announcer in Paris's gare du Nord train station. Obsessed with a man attached... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1583228489
• ISBN13: 9781583228487
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.7" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A Unique Novel

"Voice Over" is a compelling and unique novel. The story follows a never-named woman in almost a stream of consciousness style, sometimes ambling along, sometimes racing, heading down a blind alley here and circling through a detour there. At first, this is unsettling, but the effect is to create in the reader the same confusion and conflict the woman herself is experiencing. The title references both the voice-over that every person uses, that inner dialogue with which we narrate our lives to ourselves, examining and explaining our own actions and intentions and interpreting the responses and intentions of others, and which the main character reveals throughout the book; and the character's job as a train announcer, where she is the "voice over" announcing the trains' comings and goings. The job is very much like her life: carried out in private, yet entirely public as her disembodied voice guides travelers to destinations she's never seen. The central character is both randomly victimized by life and the engineer of her own victimization. She is obsessed with a man who belongs to someone else and virtually stalks him. He appears to have little interest in her, and in her despair and loneliness, she allows - in fact, encourages - exploitation by everyone from a nightclub transsexual who forces her into his act to a politician who mistakes her for a prostitute; an easy mistake, since he attended a dinner party where she claimed to be one. Meanwhile, she fantasizes about the unobtainable man and waits for his love to rescue her. Just when the reader is becoming convinced that she is completely unbalanced, he begins to return her affection. What's most interesting about this book is how we both observe and share the main character's point of view, adding another layer of "voice over" to the story. We feel the precarious balance she maintains. We fear for her reckless lifestyle and unrealistic pursuit of the man she cannot have, and are embarrassed for her failure to read people correctly and modify her responses accordingly. More than once, her inner voice mirrored my own, causing me to flinch and examine my own thinking and assumptions. If you like your books action-packed and plot-driven, this one is not for you. But if you want a character study that will make you begin to question and rethink your own narration and interpretation of the events that govern your life, and you enjoy watching a writer do something completely unique with a story, you will be as fascinated by "Voice Over" as I was.