David Foenkinos is a French author who had a best selling novel [La délicatesse] published in 2009 and has since gone on to be successful with his screenwriting. He wrote the screenplay for le Mystère Henri Pick, which was an adaption from his novel published in 2016. La tête de l'emploi published in 2014 was not one of his biggest sellers and I picked it up languishing on the shelves of my local library.

It is told in the first person in autobiographical style and tells of Bernard's struggles, when his wife of twenty years asks him to leave just at the time of the banking crisis in 2008, Unfortunately Bernard is a banker selling dodgy credit issues and he loses his job a couple of weeks after he starts his sojourn in a hotel. Soon running out of liquid money he is forced to move back to his parents house and cannot shake himself out of a lassitude that descends on him. Just before the tumultuous events that have changed his life his only daughter and probably his only friend has moved to Brazil. He starts the book by reflecting on two big mistakes in his life. The first was keeping his birth name of Bernard a name associated with friendship and softness, but not a name associated with success or celebrity. The second was falling in love and marrying his psychoanalyst, a woman who knew all his secrets. This hangdog attitude of feeling sorry for himself is a feature of much of the book. It is wistful and a little sad, the story of perhaps of a number of people who suffered because of the economic crisis.

The novel is easy to read and there are many amusing moments, but the novel cannot really make up it's mind whether it should be a critique of social mores or a comedy. It plays one against the other and generally the comedy wins. Bernard is presented as a sympathetic character, knocked out of his stride by the vicissitudes of life and it all makes for an entertaining, but light read. Its a romcom. 3 stars. ( )

Un homme qui perd tout, tout le temps, comme s'il était né pour ça. ( )