Zum Glück Pauline

In David Foenkinos' new novel, the hero immediately realizes that something is wrong: he is plagued by raging, inexplicable back pain that won't go away. It begins, accompanied by fears and tormenting fantasies, the usual medical investigation—emergency clinic, orthopedics, radiology—and always waiting, waiting, waiting. But even the MRI only provides vague results, and perhaps the strange magnetic field therapist is right after all; it might not be a physical issue at all. For our pain-ridden narrator may have a little house in a suburb of Paris, two nice children, a charming wife, and a respectable job at a prominent architecture firm, but that is all just a façade. At work, he is severely bullied, Élise, his wife, wants a divorce, he has lost contact with the children, and his parents have never liked him.