The curse of Mr Kurtz

Marie Darrieussecq shot to literary fame in France when her bestselling debut, Pig Tales (1996), was a finalist for the Prix Goncourt. Featuring a woman who turns into a pig, the novel earned Darrieussecq a reputation as a surrealist writer in the tradition of Kafka, and many of her subsequent works have involved fantastical elements and a dreamy, drifting prose style. Her two most recent novels, however, are rooted in the real, and narrated in a crisp, clear, present tense. Translated by Penny Hueston, both All The Way (2010) and her new book, Men, are about the same woman, Solange.

All the Way was shot in close-up, focussing on the minutiae of Solange’s sexed-up adolescence in small-town France. In Men, the camera never leaves the boom. Solange is now in her thirties and living in Los Angeles. She acts in movies with Matt Damon and George (Clooney, although we never hear his surname — a stroke of comic genius), but she isn’t a star.