Second Best

Product Information

Foenkinos’ smash-hit Second Best is a playful, poignant story about fate, loss and how the lives we wish we’d led might not be all they’re cracked up to be . com Praise for David Foenkinos: ‘Light, funny and erudite: a delight’ The Guardian ‘Charming, clever’ The Independent ‘A completely delightful jeu d’esprit’ Daily Mail ‘Unputdownable . a serious author who doesn’t take himself seriously’ L’Express ‘Abounds with Gallic wit and charm’ Waterstones Megan Jones is an in-house translator for Gallic Books and lives in London. Every line has something profound to say about love and loss, hope and fear, time and memory, and the enduring power of art' Andrew Michael Hurley, author of The Loney. Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall).

Decisive coincidences abound, as when a death in the family of Martin’s babysitter results in his fateful audition. Broken into four parts, each consisting of tens of chapters, the writing comes in short, poetic bursts.Foenkinos’s smash-hit Second Best is a playful, poignant story about fate, loss and how the lives we wish we’d led might not be all they’re cracked up to be . The ten-year-old boy who wasn’t cast as Harry Potter faces a lifetime of anxiety and doubt in David Foenkinos’s poignant novel Second Best. Imbuing this slim novel with its gentle, melancholic beauty is a sense of the grandness of small things. His father dies; his mother leaves him alone with sadistic boyfriends who lock him in his room; a date is aborted when Martin sees The Chamber of Secrets on Mathilde’s bookshelf and has a panic attack.

a playful blend of fact and fiction’ The Telegraph ‘Foenkinos’s surreal yet relatable novel, a French bestseller, considers life in our age of anxiety, when other people’s picture-perfect lives make our own seem drab in comparison’ Washington Post, 10 Noteworthy Books for September ‘It’s about time British readers discovered the wit and originality of David Foenkinos, and this exquisitely bittersweet comedy of life’s missed opportunities is the perfect place to start’ Jonathan Coe, author of Bournville ‘It doesn’t get more captivating than this’ Elle ‘Funny and melancholy, cruel and dramatic’ Le Figaro Littéraire ‘David Foenkinos turns a genius idea into an absorbing novel’ La Croix ‘A sensitive and kind meditation on coming back from failure’ Le Parisien ‘A lively, sharp, playful tale’ L’Obs ‘Peppered with empathy, emotion and humour’ rtbf. Stumbling from therapists and psychological hospitals to remarkable success as a student and a Louvre attendant, Martin grows up blinded by the life he isn’t living.Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. So much space on the page visually transforms each paragraph into a stanza, while lending the words a solemn weight and power . Praise for Second Best: ‘A witty and heartfelt portrait of what happens when luck does not go your way.