Faces on the Tip of My Tongue

Meetings, partings, loves and losses in rural France are dissected with compassion.

The late wedding guest isn’t your cousin but a drunken chancer. The driver who gives you a lift isn’t going anywhere but off the road. Snow settles on your car in summer and the sequins found between the pages of a borrowed novel will make your fortune. Pagano’s stories weave together the mad, the mysterious and the dispossessed of a rural French community with honesty and humour. A superb, cumulative collection from a unique French voice.

Why Peirene chose to publish this book:

This is a spellbinding web of stories about people on the periphery. Pagano makes rural France her subject matter. She invokes the closeness of a local community and the links between the inhabitants’ lives. But then she reminds us how little we know of each other.

This volume contains a selection of stories from Un renard à mains nues.

Intalnirile, despartirile, iubirile si pierderile din Franta rurala sunt disecate cu compasiune. Invitatul tarziu la nunta nu este varul tau, ci un sofer de betie. Soferul care iti ofera un lift nu merge nicaieri decat in afara drumului.