René Belletto is a French novelist and script-writer. His novels (Le Revenant, 1981; Sur la terre comme au ciel, 1982; L'Enfer, 1986) combine the suspense of the detective story with humour and sensitive characterisation.
The bizarre description on the back cover, the eye-catching artwork, and the attention-grabbing title combined to draw me to Rene Belletto's Dying. I read it quickly - at first completely absorbed by the absurdly unconventional technique, and then ending it actually annoyed by just *HOW* off the wall it became.
I consider myself a very bright individual, and I honestly have no idea what happened. I still am a bit affectionate about it -- there was some lovely use of language, some very clever plays on story-telling -- I just think I must've missed the genius here.
The Millions review made me feel like I was missing out on a lot of what was going on by not having read any of Belletto's earlier work. Still, very good with stretches of great in the middle, such as the orchestra scene. The ending let me down somewhat, especially in regards to the mysterious text referred to throughout which was resolved a little cleaner than I'd have liked, but perhaps if I was more familiar with Belletto, I'd have better understood what he was up to.