Status Updates From Les archives des sentiments

There are writers who write intense. And there are quiet writers. Stamm definitely belongs to the second category. But while quietness mostly is associated with a certain melancholy, tenderness or soft feelings, Stamm's quietness is lost, distanced, cold.

All the more surprising that this time he gives us an end with a ray of hope. Didn't expect that.

The narrator is an unlikely hero. Suffering from OCD, autistic traits. He shuns decisions, the world around him slowly fades away. His encounters with Fabienne happen in his mind as he's mostly living in his fantasies.

An interesting problem: how do you archive love. Is it medical/pathologic, sociology/encounters, biology/hormones? The thesaurus doesn't help.

At times hard to bear how he stands in his own way.

Since 'To the Back of Beyond', the novels of Stamm disappoint me. But I'm still hoping to rediscover the magic of his early books. This seems to be in line with his recent works. A narrator estranged from the world, living in his thoughts. He wants to archive everything. He even bought the archive of his former company to avoid its destruction. Is he now archiving the feelings of his first unfulfilled love?