Having read Fernanda Melchor's superb Hurricane Season, I thought I knew what to expect from this novel — a twisting, spiralling novel weaving through a connected cast of characters centred on a terrible event. And it was — flawlessly! — but, more than that, this novel felt fresh in a way that very few things do anymore.

The first part of The Birthday Party is very slow paced, showing the peaceful (but maybe a little humdrum) life of the residents of a tiny rural French hamlet: Marion and Patrice live with their young daughter Ida alongside their artist neighbour Christine. The peace is then shattered when three armed men arrive on Marion’s birthday - why are they there and what do they want? The rest of the novel is then claustrophobically tense because anything could happen and no one is safe.

Content warning: the dog is killed, so animal lovers may need to steel themselves.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 because the atmosphere still haunts me weeks after reading.

Sadly, I dnf'd this very early on as I didn't get on with the writing style. The combination of the long, flowing sentences and style of narrative voice was not for me.

Mauvignier writes ferociously, provocatively, and with tenacity. It’s riveting stuff. My first by him, and I’ve become an instant fan. I will certainly check out his other (translated) works.

He masterfully draws the reader into a parochial French hamlet - an unremarkable world - sleepy and soporific. We almost taste the boredom and sense of nothingness. Nothing ever changes. Nothing dramatic ever happens.

And then he hits us with a hammer blow: sleepy rural charm is replaced by a high-octane thriller to rival any set in the heart of Paris.

My only criticism is that I found the book too long at 500 pages, diluting the tension slightly.

My thanks to Fitzcarraldo Editions and NetGalley for granting this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What a ride. A book that kept me on the edge, turning pages as fast as I could and always wondering what was goind to happen.
There's a sense of dread and doom even when the setting seems so idillyc.
Excellent storytelling, plot and character development.
The first I read by this author but not the last one.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Laurent Mauvignier’s Histoires de la Nuit, which is being published by Fitzcarraldo Editions (as The Birthday Party) in an English translation by Daniel Levin Becker, is, at a superficial level, a “home invasion” thriller. It is set in the fictional hamlet of “Three Lone Girls Stead” in rural France. The residents of the hamlet are the Bergogne family – farmer Patrice, his wife Marion and their young daughter Ida – and their elderly neighbour Christine, once a celebrated artist, who has now lived there for years as a sort of semi-recluse away from media attention. Christine is close to the Bergognes, especially Patrice and little Ida, who affectionately calls her “Tatie”. Yet there is no love lost between her and Marion, whom she suspects of being cold towards Patrice. This notwithstanding, Christine joins Patrice and Ida in preparing a party for Marion’s fortieth. Indeed, the novel’s narrative develops over just one day – Marion’s birthday. But unknown to the oblivious Bergognes and Christine, a trio of dubious characters from the past are planning to gatecrash the celebration for reasons which will be discovered over the course of the evening.

The Birthday Party ticks the necessary boxes of the thriller genre, except that – counterintuitively and purposely - it moves at a glacial pace. In what is certainly a nod to cinematic techniques, Mauvignier’s descriptions zoom into close-up, describing minutely the characters’ actions. Then, doing what a cinematographer would find it difficult to do but a novelist can, he delves into the psyche of the protagonists, often slipping into a sort of stream-of-consciousness approach.

In the initial pages I loved this approach, which I found incredible immersive and involving. But I must admit that my initial enthusiasm started to wane, and by the end of the 500+ page novel I was making an effort to keep going. The novel is an interesting exploration of the secrets we keep even from our closest family, and it touches upon many interesting themes. It should appeal to those who love genre fiction of a literary bent but it is perhaps better described as an anti-thriller.

It's hard to know where to begin with this novel - and I say that as a positive point, because the prose style used in this novel is at once hypnotic and elegant, with sentences that seems to go on for the whole page. I read the English translation and wondered whether the French version is the same, and whose version of the story I was actually reading: the original writer's or the translators. Either way, the story is a suspenseful one, and if the length of the sentences and depth of detail is a narrative strategy to enhance the tension, well, it worked. Running through the plot are the elements of uncanny fiction: an isolated place, uninhabited houses, unrequited love, the receiving of unpleasant, anonymous letters, secrets. All of which are the worthy components of the horror genre. But this is not a horror story, these elements are used to maintain the tension between the characters, which heightens as a birthday party is organised, only for things to go from bad to worse. No spoilers.

Highly, highly recommended, and my thanks to the publishers, who consistently publish beautiful, clever and compelling novels, and to NetGalley for the ARC.

Buried deep in rural France, little remains of the isolated hamlet of the Three Lone Girls, save a few houses and a curiously assembled quartet: Patrice Bergogne, inheritor of his family’s farm; his wife, Marion; their daughter, Ida; and their neighbour, Christine, an artist. While Patrice plans a surprise for his wife’s fortieth birthday, inexplicable events start to disrupt the hamlet’s quiet existence: anonymous, menacing letters, an unfamiliar car rolling up the driveway. And as night falls, strangers stalk the houses, unleashing a nightmarish chain of events.
  Told in rhythmic, propulsive prose that weaves seamlessly from one consciousness to the next over the course of a day, Laurent Mauvignier’s The Birthday Party is a deft unravelling of the stories we hide from others and from ourselves, a gripping tale of the violent irruptions of the past into the present, written by a major contemporary French writer.
Really enjoyable read and totally recommend
Thank you NetGalley and Fitzcarraldo Editions
I just reviewed The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier. tr. by Daniel Levin Becker. #TheBirthdayParty #NetGalley

Well, let's just say that if I were nail-biter, all ten fingers would be down to the quick!

Mauvignier has done something pleasingly adroit here: he's taken the well-worn trope of the scary house invasion by hostile strangers and given it a dark literary spin purely through the stylistics of his writing.

What I mean is that the plot has been done countless times before, the characters are straight out of the stock-cupboard - and even the scenes are ones we've all known forever.

But the writing creates a glorious and productive tension between the clichés of content and the mode of telling. Using a close 3rd person which jumps into the consciousness of various characters and by eschewing the use of speech marks, this offers up an intense literary experience that puts us <i>there</i> experiencing the terror, the frightening brutality and psychopathy from both the inside and outside. I was thinking of a writer like [author:Javier Marías|71956] with his winding clauses and forensic attention to details which, in a less accomplished hand, could be construed as filler but which, mysteriously, just winds the tension up to screaming level.

Personally, I felt that this was too long at around 500 pages and if I were the editor, I'd have cut the Christine story which can detract from what's going on in the main house. It's the sort of book that would benefit from being short enough to read in one or two sittings, and that shortening would allow us to watch, horror-struck, fingers over eyes and mouth, as all the things we expect come to fruition. And how clever that this doesn't try to shove in a twist or anything cheap - what Mauvignier adds to an overworked trope isn't an extension of plot - he plays that through without deviating from the script - but by wrapping it up in a literary style that proves itself as adept at ramping up the intensity as anything by more commercial writers.

I'd say this is to the 'home invasion' story what Marias is to the spy novel.

Laurent Mauvignier’s desperately uneven, slow-motion, literary thriller revisits his fictional Le Bassée, a semi-rural region of France. In what’s essentially an attempt to subvert the all-too-familiar, home invasion plot, Mauvignier tackles some weighty subjects ranging from troubled “white” masculinity, marital frustrations, and domestic abuse to class resentment, and cultural rifts in contemporary France. His “huis clos” narrative plays out through spaces of literal and metaphorical confinement. Patrice, his wife Marion and daughter Ida, and their close neighbour, once-celebrated artist Christine, live like an extended family in an isolated hamlet, close to a small town. The area has seen better days, jobs are scarce, younger generations have moved away, and Patrice is barely scraping a living from the smallholding passed down from his father. The quartet are bound together by shared, daily rituals yet separated by secrets and lies. The action takes place over two days, in the build-up to a celebration planned for Marion’s fortieth birthday, an event marred by the arrival of another in a stream of poison pen letters addressed to Christine then totally thrown off-course by the sudden appearance of three, sinister strangers.

Mauvignier’s noir-ish story’s explicitly borrowing from numerous genres, from traditional Westerns to fairy tales, and the contes cruels glimpsed in the bedtime stories Marion reads to Ida. It’s also a highly-referential, at times deliberately cinematic, piece which variously pays homage to the films of Jean Cocteau, Robert Bresson and Claude Chabrol. Although Mauvignier seems to be aiming for a level of psychological depth here, I found his characters, particularly the three intruders, stereotypical, even stock, figures. There’s Christine - a perfect role for Isabelle Huppert - a wealthy, bohemian, Parisian in exile; Patrice a "doughy," brooding farmer; Marion the feisty ‘femme fatale’ with a dubious past; Ida the curiously, ‘knowing’ child; rounded off by the band of violent, resentful, working-class criminals who disrupt the hamlet’s ordered existence. Although Christine’s presumably partly informed by Mauvignier’s own art-school background.

Mauvignier choice of style marks a radical departure from standard thriller-writing conventions: his sentences are often lengthy and winding; his scenes rendered in incredible, intense detail, sometimes akin to something unfolding in real time. I thought his slow-paced approach was highly effective for at least the first half, somehow ramping up rather than defusing an atmosphere of tension and growing menace. There are pleasing touches like the David Seymour photograph that inspired Christine’s artistic career but also hints at what’s to come. But as this progressed, I became more and more impatient, the detail started to feel like unnecessary filler, the style too dense, and the twisting plot increasingly forced and crudely drawn.

Home invasion narratives have a reputation for being socially conservative, a reflection of prevailing cultural anxieties, frequently dabbling in simplistic notions of the line between order and chaos and/or a showdown between good and evil. Although Mauvignier tries to steer clear of these pitfalls, he doesn’t entirely evade them, particularly when it comes to his depiction of gender and the nuclear family. There’s also more than a whiff of cloying sentimentality pervading the final chapters. Moreover, Mauvignier’s none-too-subtle when it comes to representing mental health issues, class divides, or sexual exploitation – the scenes with Patrice and the Black “prostitutes” in the neighbouring town were especially problematic. So, for me at least, this didn’t live up to its initial promise although there were some entertaining, imaginative flourishes along the way.

I found Mauvignier's way of writing to be a bit over the top. In a way I'd say it was over written and you have to seriously focus to keep track of what is happening as the sentences lead you off in tangents and are on a mission to create a forbidding atmosphere. After a while this became a bit tiring.

An ARC gently provided by author/publisher via Netgalley