Black Forest

Book excerpt: A man decides he is old enough. A woman returns early from a lovers' retreat to a bottle of pills at home. And how should you explain the nuances of contemporary Paris to your mother, twenty – five years dead? Valérie Mr éjen 's Black Forest is a book of mourning that isn ' t morbid or sentimental, but rather an elegant and wryly humorous brace against the void. With a paradoxically detached intimacy, Mr éjen follows death's dark and twisted path through the lives it touches, wringing out every possible meaning—or non–meaning— along the way. A writer at the height of her career who draws comparisons to Georges Perec and Nathalie Sarraute, Mr éjen has cemented her status as an auteur with a singular voice, guiding us through the Black Forest of ghosts that populate her subconscious.