Book Review: I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere, By Anna Gavalda

This is a charming little collection of short stories about people living in France, specifically the more humdrum areas surrounding the glamour of Paris.  I picked it up based on a recommendation from one of the innumerable book blogs I read every week, under the assurance that, despite appearances, this was not chick-lit. 

The author of that blog was being about 85% honest.  Yes, I was pleasantly surprised at the minimalist, dialogue-focused style (the one that, unfortunately falling into stereotyping, I tend to associate more often with male writers) and the lack of over-romanticizing things.  Each character in each story, particularly the female protagonists, had a refreshing cynicism and cautiousness in his or her manner, and even the most woebegone characters were far from whiny. 

Two stories I particularly enjoyed and which stuck with me were "For Years" and "Clic-Clac" which were for me the most genuine (the former) and the most humorous (the latter).  Both are tales of unrequited/unfinished love, and each takes pains to avoid underestimating the reader.  "For Years" has a couple who has not seen one another in a very long time, and indeed believes they never will again.  Yet one day, out of the blue, they are reunited, and their encounter is, I would say, Gavalda's best work in the volume.  "Clic-Clac" is a tale of a man who lives with his two sisters and who lusts embarrassingly after a female co-worker.  Naturally, various hijinks abound.  This one just has so many laughs, and things you could see actually happening in real life, that the reader is immediately pulled in to the interior of a man who might otherwise seem very pathetic.

Two entries I could have done with out are definitely "Pregnant" and the Epilogue.  The Epilogue is what appears to be a fictionalized story of one of Gavalda's own attempts to get herself published, and apart from seeming kind of self-involved, it just wasn't very engaging.  And "Pregnant" is the story that almost made me put down the book-- the protagonist is a "typical" female, overly sentimental and borderline mentally unstable (at least, it seems that way), and the concluding plot twist is so obvious from the very beginning that it was hard to get invested in any of the rest of the story.  I honestly just wanted to flip ahead and verify that my guess was right (and of course, it was), rather than read pages upon pages of this protagonist being exactly the kind of woman I usually loathe.

Overall, though, I'd recommend this based on the two stand-outs, and for a fun little read in between more serious texts (I've been studying Paradise Lost and The Great Divorce, so Gavalda's frivolity was a lovely reprieve), not to mention a very charming little snapshot of French quirkiness and style.