Double Life

by frederic-raphael

Retired French diplomat begins to write his memoirs. As he does so he remembersand confronts the betrayals and dislocations that have shaped and warped his life... Amesmerising work of shameless intimacy.

352 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Peter Burton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate to write this but I only got a third of the way through before I gave up.It is very well written and intelligent,but too intelligent for me.I struggled with the detailed style and had to concentrate on every sentence to make sure I fully understood the aphorisms etc.and I felt that at my age life was too short to spend so much time on it when I had so much more to read.If I live long enough I may come back to it.I checked out other reviews on line and did not feel compelled to finish,although they did give me the gist of the story.

[Robert Wechsler]

I was lucky enough to have been able to publish this, Frederic Raphael's 18th and most ambitious and successful novel. It is the fictional memoir of a French diplomat who has been constantly untrue to himself. At the heart of Guy de Roumegouse's duplicity is his inability to desire what he desires, to be what he is. And therefore his is a life of imposture, a life steeped in paradox.

Guy's duplicity is echoed in the actions of the French under the Vichy government during the Second World War. An adolescent then, Guy was caught up in the Resistance, but it is what happened — and what did not happen — before and during his period of hiding that truly set the tone for the rest of his life.

This novel seeks to excavate the contemporary French psyche via Guy's memories of the betrayals, most of them self-inflicted, that warped his life. This remarkable dramatic monologue is delivered in prose as cold and paradoxical as its narrator, but elegantly crafted and wittily epigrammatic. Guy's rational, French voice allows him to hide his true feelings from himself while disclosing them to readers and providing a powerful, moving narrative.

Here are a couple of quotes from the unfortunately few American reviews of the novel:

"[A] riveting, repulsive, and exceptionally rewarding novel." —Boston Sunday Globe

"Repressed histories, sexual and political, drive this brilliant and wrenching story of a man whose emotional response mechanism has been terminally misdirected. … [Raphael] has created a novel to remember out of a dispassionate vacuum. … alternately chilling and magnificently tragic." —Publishers Weekly

[Mike Finn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. Beautiful thoughtful language from beginning to end. The history of a disappointed articulate but dull and undynamic diplomat