His friends call him Paul Newman. His ears stick out; he has a long nose, thick glasses and a slight limp. He is starting his final year in high school. He likes Greek, Latin, Physics and Classics. He does not like cultural shopping, communication spaces, forums for trends and four wheelers. He likes Mara’s shorts, Claire’s knickers, Agnès’s neck and Barberine’s bottom.
Summer in Paris. He invites his inseparable friends, ‘Furtive the effusive’, Adham and Agnès, to spend a few days at his flat during his parents’ absence, and the foursome transform the place into a stage for impromptu libertine episodes.
The discovery of a safe, hidden behind a painting in his mother’s room, initiates a detective’s investigation that sets our hero on the search for the mysterious inhabitants of an isolated petrol station, set on a plateau in the midst of lavender fields. A young Asiatic girl, her mother, a man who reminds him of his own lost father…
Like La Vie parlée, Vieux garçon offers an enthralling tale, elegantly written, full of humor and originality, and built around an absorbing set of characters and comical situations.
Vieux garçon is Bernard Chapuis’s fifth novel. He was awarded the Roger-Nimier prize in 2005 for his fourth book, La Vie parlée.