Moon in a Dead Eye by Pascal Garnier: book review

Moon in a Dead Eye (2009, English version 2013) is set in a retirement village in the south of France.

The title comes from Alain Bashung and Jean Fauque: ‘A speck of dust in your eye, and the whole world’s a blur.’

Martial and Odette Sudre had just moved from Paris, where they had lived for 20 years, into ‘Les Conviviales’ – a retirement village of identical ‘bland bungalows … like so many polished tombstones.’ They were the first ones to purchase a home in the village. Martial had a space in the cellar for his workbench and tools, while the rest of the bungalow was Odette’s to decorate with new furniture. The clubhouse for activities was not yet open, and the solar-heated swimming pool was empty. They filled their days with television, books, making jam, and putting up shelves.

Then the Nodes from Orleans moved in next door. Maxime and Marlene have a white piano. Marlene had danced at the Paris Opera in her youth and Maxime had sold greenhouses across Europe.

Then the very classy single woman, Lea, moved in, straight out of her mansion in Paris.

Nadine Touchard, 45, accepted a job in the retirement village – just one day a week – to look after the clubhouse activities.

Only five retirees in the almost empty retirement village. And each with their own foibles, fears, paranoias, and irritations: the son, the piano, the fly, the gypsies, the gun. Then things go horribly wrong. It is the night the moon is reflected in the caretaker’s eye.

This is an unpredictable dark-humour novel, and a bit creepy. Garnier explores the dark elements of the human character. Seemingly in slow-motion but in reality it is a short, fast-paced novella that moves seamlessly from the light into the dark.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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