Long Way Off: Shocking, hilarious and poignant noir

Pascal Garnier, who died in March 2010, was a talented novelist, short story writer, children’s author and painter. From his home in the mountains of the Ardèche, he wrote fiction in a noir palette with a cast of characters drawn from ordinary provincial life. Though his writing is often very dark in tone, it sparkles with quirkily beautiful imagery and dry wit. Garnier’s work has been likened to the great thriller writer, Georges Simenon.Emily Boyce is a translator and editor. She was shortlisted for the French Book Office New Talent in Translation Award in 2008, the French-American Translation Prize in 2016, and the Scott Moncrieff Prize in 2021. She lives in London.

Praise for Pascal Garnier‘The final descent into violence is worthy of J G Ballard. 4 stars’ The Independent‘Combines a sense of the surreal with a ruthless wit’ The Observer‘Reminiscent of Joe Orton and the more impish films of Alfred Hitchcock and Claude Chabrol’ Sunday Times‘Tense, strange, disconcerting and slyly funny’ Sunday Times‘A brilliant exercise in grim and gripping irony, it makes you grin as well as wince’ Sunday Telegraph‘The combination of sudden violence, surreal touches and bone-dry humour have led to Garnier’s work being compared with the films of Tarantino and the Coen brothers’ Sunday Times‘A mixture of Albert Camus and JG Ballard’ Financial Times‘Bleak, often funny and never predictable’ The Observer‘Combines a sense of the surreal with a ruthless wit.’ The ObserverFeatured in the Independent‘s ‘Crème de la Crime’ ‘A master of the surreal noir thriller – Luis Buñuel meets Georges Simenon’ Times Literary Supplement‘A perfectly balanced cross between a thriller and a social document’ L’Express‘Deliciously dark … painfully funny’ New York Times‘A guaranteed grisly thriller’ ShortList‘Horribly funny … appalling and bracing in equal measure’ John Banville‘Garnier plunges you into a bizarre, overheated world, seething death, writing, fictions and philosophy. He’s a trippy, sleazy, sly and classy read’ A. L. Kennedy‘Arch and lyrical … a funny and outlandish story’ Crime Thriller Fella‘Garnier’s main theme – the banality of a bourgeois existence – is a common one, although never, in my experience, has it been dealt with so succinctly … a clever piece of literary noir’ Killing Time Crime‘Garnier’s books are marked by their integration of strange characters into their French provincial settings as evinced by The Panda Theory and How’s The Pain? and always retain at their heart a sense of human frailty, despite the blackness of the humour and at times horrific events. Combining the style of Simenon with the visual imagination and humour of the Coen Brothers, there is much to recommend these novellas. They are small works of literary genius, and I would urge you to discover them for yourselves’ Raven Crime Reads‘If you appreciate Georges Simenon’s romans durs, i.e. his harder, edgier novels, Garnier is your boy … He routinely tosses off penetrating philosophical truths like they’re afterthoughts, as the French do so well. There’s dark humor in these short novels, lots of apparently arbitrary brutality that’s all the more chilling due to its seeming randomness, colourful characters, and some lines and passages that hit such a deep place, you just have to put the book down and reflect for a while after reading them’ Criminal Element blog‘Brief, brisk, ruthlessly entertaining … Garnier makes bleakness pleasurable’ John Powers, National Public Radio