A Void (Verba Mundi)

This novel, a lipogram with no words containing the letter "e" (the most common letter in both the original French and this masterful translation into English) is such a gripping story that one hardly notices the incredible feat of writing a full-length novel without using the most common words in both languages. A poetic and gripping whodunit. Excellent reading.

This is not an easy read. I am an English teacher and it took a little effort to get through. But, part of the fun is just taking your time and marveling at what the author (and then the translator) has done. It's meant for people who love language, words, and writing. It boggles the mind. First, the original author wrote an entire book (in French) without using the letter e. Then, the translator re-wrote it in English without using the letter e. If that sounds interesting to you, then you will like the book. If you're thinking "who cares?" then you might want to skip it.

This is an amazing feat of both writing and translation. It's a bit like an easy Finnegans Wake. Perec writes an interesting story about the missing letter "e". There isn't an "e" in the entire book. What makes this especially amusing is Perec's direct dives at phrases requiring an "e" and making a clean escape. I can't help but smile every time I pick this book up.Good for the mind! Read it. Makes a great gift too.

This book is a massive exercise in craft! Mr. Perec tackles the challenge of writing a entire novel without the use of the letter e. A feat then repeated by the translator of this edition and survived by a diligent reader who musts arm to follow the twists on conventional language usage. Conceptually this is layered in typical Perec fashion playfully creating puns, plays on words and references to syntax as subject. Brilliant and challenging.

This writer is like no other. To be able to write a whole novel and not include the letter E is a task. He writes well and keeps you in suspense. highly recommended.

How do you write coherently about a book that was equal parts frustrating and marvelous? It's probably best to start with its author, Georges Perec, who started out as the bane of my existence but I'm happy to report is on my list of authors that I admire. Perec was a French writer and a member of Oulipo from 1969 to his death in 1982. Though I have yet to read his other works (novels, play, poetry, and opera librettos, even), it is easy to see why Perec is considered a "literary experimentalist."A Void is a literary feat: it is, in short, a novel written without a single E in its 300 pages. While Life a Users Manual is considered his magnum opus, A Void stands as a triumph in taking a constraint, the lipogram, and making it work in long form fiction. And beyond that, Perec found that the constraint provided a means to break free of our ideas of what could be done with fiction."My ambition, as Author, my point, I would go so far as to say my fixation, my constant fixation, was primarily to concoct an artifact as original as it was illuminating, an artifact that would, or just possibly might, act as a stimulant on notions of construction, of narration, of plotting, of action, a stimulant, in a word, on fiction-writing today."Anton Vowl is the subject of this novel; or, more accurately, his disappearance serves as a catalyst for this literary whodunit that leads his friends on a twisting and turning path, following half clues and false paths. In this essay on reading Perec, Warren Motte points to voids in Perec's own life--namely, his parents:"On the other hand, the absence of a sign is always the sign of an absence, and the absence of the E in A Void announces a broader, cannily coded discourse on loss, catastrophe, and mourning. Perec cannot say the words père, mère, parents, famille in his novel, nor can he write the name Georges Perec. In short, each "void" in the novel is abundantly furnished with meaning, and each points toward the existential void that Perec grappled with throughout his youth and early adulthood. A strange and compelling parable of survival becomes apparent in the novel, too, if one is willing to reflect on the struggles of a Holocaust orphan trying to make sense out of absence, and those of a young writer who has chosen to do without the letter that is the beginning and end of écriture."A Void is a marvel. An exercise in the absurd. A self-aware piece of fiction: "La Disparition? Or Adair's translation of it?" At times, it feels like Perec is winking, nudging, and blowing raspberries at the reader ("nothing, nothing at all, but irritation at an opportunity knocking so loudly and so vainly, nothing but frustration at a truth so dormant and frail that, on his approach, it sinks into thin air.") And let's not overlook his underscoring the letter E's absence throughout the novel: twenty five books on a shelf that once held twenty six (25 letters remain in the alphabet that's missing an E), Anton Vowl's absence (A. Vowl, get it?), and so on.For me, the story and character development were secondary to the intricate, convoluted tangents that make this narrative unique. While some writers are satisfied by describing the landscape, Perec seems to delight in telling the reader each item or object's history, it's disappointments, absurdity, etc. At times, the narrative flagged for this reader but it was at those times that Perec was aware, pointing to the pointlessness of the many digressions from plot to subplot to who knows where.How did he pull it off? And perhaps equally important, how did Adair manage to translate this beast of a book into English? Because he did.A Void isn't for every reader. Though it is set in Paris, it is not the Paris for lovers. It's the 1960s and Paris is in shambles. Where total anarchy prevails. If you are up for a read that asks more of you than you're accustomed to, if you are up for a challenge-a rewarding one at that-then give this a go. But don't go throwing your book at me. I warned you, didn't I? Recommended.

This book was written without the use of the letter `e'. While this is an impressive achievement; there is a trivia question about  Gadsby: A Lipogram Novel  that was written in English with the same constraints. The achievement is even greater since the book was written in French. If you lose the `e' in French, you lose two thirds of the articles, many useful verbs, and half of the nouns.But--this is a strong story on its own. As with the best of anything `experimental,' the formal nature of the construction of the work falls away in enjoyment of the text, if not enhances this. For me, this is the difference between Joyce's last two books.  Ulysses (Oxford World's Classics)  uses style interacting with narrative to tell a story;  Finnegans Wake (Penguin Modern Classics)  is all style, and impenetrable for my casual perusal.So--like the best of post/modern literature, like Calvino's  If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (Everyman's Library (Cloth))  or Nabokov's  Pale Fire (Everyman's Library (Cloth)) , A Void's structure is both part of the story and an exploration of what it means to tell a story. I was excited to read this book because of the formal construction, but what kept drawing me back was not the formal experimentation, but the mystery. As one character says, "Nothing is as cryptic as a void" (90). I think this sums up the attraction. I won't speak at length on the plot, but it is a mystery that comes together like pieces of an inter-locking three-dimensional puzzle that give further credit to the creator of this work.On a side note, part of me is interested in the construction of the work and the translation into English. I want that story to be told, but I suppose that is ephemera with little audience.

impeccable