My Paris (Lannan Selection)

Rating:
Summary: By an original and deftly talented novelist
Review: My Paris by Gail Scott is a work of literary fiction about a Canadian woman's time in a Parisian studio. Examining cultural legacy entrenched against the onslaught of globalized mass-media, and written in a staccato style that relies upon long strings of sentence fragments - complete subject-verb sentences are disdained for the power of emotional abbreviations of thought and form - My Paris is memorable and distinguished work, marking Gail Scott as an original and deftly talented novelist.

Rating:
Summary: Beyond plot
Review: My Paris is the scantest trace of a plotline. Its nothing you are going to lose yourself in, but a book - like Woolf's Orlando - that forces you to pause, consider, and backpedal after each passage. Conceptually, the book begins with the syntax where the present-progressive verb tense complicates time while blurring the distinction between subject and predicate. All in all, the book describes Paris and all that influences a character's impression of it.