A review by alirowan
The Little Girl and the Cigarette by Benoît Duteurtre

I expected a lot from this book, based on the quotes on its cover, but I felt that it fell a bit flat. It wasn't as biting a satire as I expected, and lacked much of the humour you'd expect, though I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt and assuming a fair amount of wit was lost in the translation. That aside, the pace of the ending completely threw me off. With the first 90% of the book focused on a couple key events, the last 10% decided to sprint for the finish line, introducing arguably the most interesting part of the book in the last 20 pages. To say the ending felt rushed would be a bit of an understatement.