A review by andrew61
How's the Pain? by Pascal Garnier

4.0

I had seen this writers books on the library shelves and thought they look interesting purely from the covers and then I heard Ian Rankin picking one of them as his choice on Radio 4's 'A Good Read' so I gave this book a go. Many reviewers and even the cover compare it to Simenon so perhaps luckily as I have never tried him I have come to this book fresh with no preconceptions and I really enjoyed it. It reads very much like watching a black and white subtitled French film and captures very well a sense of place and character plus it is very dark but with a black humour that appealed to me. The story is about two men , Simon is an older man who on a stop in a small French Village befriends Bernard a young man trapped at home with a suffocating mother, Simon asks Bernard to be his driver as he goes on a job to the South of France. On the way to their destination they pick up a young woman and her baby after Simon intervenes in an incident where she is being abused by her partner. Simon, whose true skills are gradually revealed, is drawn into a bizarre form of domesticity whilst he completes his unique brand of pest control. The opening two chapters reveal something that eventually is resolved in the end. Apparently the writer died a few years ago and there is a limited amount of his work and I am curious to know more about him as it was a really good read and I am surprised that I had not heard of him before. As I commented it has a black cinematic feel which had me reaching for a glass of pastis and a gauloise so I would recommend it and will be certainly reading more by him.