I will read every book Patrick deWitt writes. The Portland author now has four novels under his belt, and each one is wildly, satisfyingly different—from the boozy Bukowski blackouts of his first, Ablutions: Notes for a Novel, to the Charles Portis-informed comic western of his best, the phenomenal The Sisters Brothers. From the fractured fairy tale of Undermajordomo Minor to the curdled high-society New York and Paris of his latest, French Exit. The common element is deWitt’s wonderfully aslant window into these varied worlds, and how he casts black humor and surrealist streaks of magic onto familiar literary terrains.
French Exit’s Manhattan milieu evokes midcentury writers like Salinger and Cheever; I was also reminded of Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy and how that book observed moneyed New Yorkers from the vantage point of a curious child. Most readers, though, will immediately think of Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, particularly with the character of scumbag lawyer Franklin Price, who is dead before the events of French Exit begin—although his widow, Frances, suspects he may have been reincarnated as the cat. Their son, Malcolm, spends most of his days disinterestedly aggravating his fiancée over expensive lunches. Frances and Malcolm have reached the end of Frank’s money, and opt to escape New York for a friend’s rent-free apartment in Paris.