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Une partie de chasse
Au cours d'une partie de chasse, un homme tombe dans une galerie souterraine. Tristan est désigné pour rester sur les lieux tandis que les autres iront chercher du renfort. Mais les secours n'arrivent pas et la tempête se lève. Une longue attente commence. Tout en essayant de soutenir moralement celui qui s'est blessé en tombant (et dont il se sent si loin), Tristan se remémore la suite des événements. Il revit sa rencontre avec sa femme Emma, l'évolution de leur relation. C'est elle qui l'a convaincu de partir chasser, pour que les autres l'acceptent dans le cercle des hommes. Il repense aussi à sa mère malade dont l'image le hante encore aujourd'hui, au petit garçon docile qu'il était alors à son chevet.
Et lui, qui a toujours plié sous la volonté des femmes, interroge enfin la place de son propre désir. Tristan s'abrite de la tempête comme on se terre au fond d'un terrier, dialoguant en cachette avec un animal rescapé de la partie de chasse, quand les voix des humains ne lui parviennent plus. La nature se déchaîne alors dans une colère salutaire. Et peut-être le déluge, qui emporte tout sur son passage, obéit-il au rêve de Tristan de faire table rase.
Avec Une partie de chasse, Agnès Desarthe signe un roman violent et énigmatique. Il nous parle d'un monde que les dieux auraient abandonné, laissant la place aux pulsions les plus secrètes qui dorment dans le cœur des hommes.
Et lui, qui a toujours plié sous la volonté des femmes, interroge enfin la place de son propre désir. Tristan s'abrite de la tempête comme on se terre au fond d'un terrier, dialoguant en cachette avec un animal rescapé de la partie de chasse, quand les voix des humains ne lui parviennent plus. La nature se déchaîne alors dans une colère salutaire. Et peut-être le déluge, qui emporte tout sur son passage, obéit-il au rêve de Tristan de faire table rase.
Avec Une partie de chasse, Agnès Desarthe signe un roman violent et énigmatique. Il nous parle d'un monde que les dieux auraient abandonné, laissant la place aux pulsions les plus secrètes qui dorment dans le cœur des hommes.
153 pages, Paperback
First published August 23, 2012
3 people are currently reading
238 people want to read
About the author
Agnès Desarthe
114 books46 followersAgnès Desarthe est un écrivain et traductrice français. Elle écrit aussibien des livres pour adultes que de livres pour enfants.
Agnès Desarthe is a French writer and translator. She writes both for adults and for children.
Agnès Desarthe is a French writer and translator. She writes both for adults and for children.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
August 27, 2018
aieehaaieee. Sorry, I just tuned in to my desktop Goodreads account for the first time in a while and discovered these monstrous advertisements. I don’t know if I can take it.
However, I will at least write this review. If you are looking for a good book to close out Women in Translation month (not that you shouldn’t read it in October if that works for you) this would be a nice choice.
This was a capstone project for translator Christiana Hills, for her master’s degree in NYU’s translation program (per her afterword). Her first full length published translation, I think it shows a mature ability to capture tone, mood, and nuance. Quite impressive.
And the book covers a lot of ground in 176 pages, exploring child-parent relationships, personal responsibility, addiction, lust, masculinity, betrayal, what it means to be human, where do the sublime moments of life come from, the power of nature and how to survive, small communities, marriage, and some dozen other topics. But I think primarily it is about grief. You can grieve for a lost childhood, for betrayal, for a lost child or failed marriage, or so much else. How do humans react to grief, how do they become oblivious of what harm they do in the midst of their own hurt?
And, how do they claw their way back to some sort of life they can go on with? What kind of crisis brings us to view our life from a sufficiently detached point of view, and to suddenly see another’s point of view, to give them sufficient importance and love to let go of our pride or self-centeredness to fix things? And what pain there is for people who never do escape the depths of grief?
And yet, it is a lovely book, with beautiful descriptions, a touching philosophical conversation between man and beast, and an ending that gives .
However, I will at least write this review. If you are looking for a good book to close out Women in Translation month (not that you shouldn’t read it in October if that works for you) this would be a nice choice.
This was a capstone project for translator Christiana Hills, for her master’s degree in NYU’s translation program (per her afterword). Her first full length published translation, I think it shows a mature ability to capture tone, mood, and nuance. Quite impressive.
And the book covers a lot of ground in 176 pages, exploring child-parent relationships, personal responsibility, addiction, lust, masculinity, betrayal, what it means to be human, where do the sublime moments of life come from, the power of nature and how to survive, small communities, marriage, and some dozen other topics. But I think primarily it is about grief. You can grieve for a lost childhood, for betrayal, for a lost child or failed marriage, or so much else. How do humans react to grief, how do they become oblivious of what harm they do in the midst of their own hurt?
And, how do they claw their way back to some sort of life they can go on with? What kind of crisis brings us to view our life from a sufficiently detached point of view, and to suddenly see another’s point of view, to give them sufficient importance and love to let go of our pride or self-centeredness to fix things? And what pain there is for people who never do escape the depths of grief?
And yet, it is a lovely book, with beautiful descriptions, a touching philosophical conversation between man and beast, and an ending that gives .
December 5, 2019
A strange novella about a young man who goes on a hunting trip for the first time with some other men from the village he lives in. This narrative bounces between the hunting trip, his life growing up, and other individuals in the village as a storm wreaks havoc.
There is a plot, but that is not the main driver of the book. It's a meditation on humanity and how a life can be lived or wasted. One mode of conveying this is through a conversation occurring between the protagonist and a rabbit he accidentally shot. I especially enjoyed these aspects of the narrative and had wished there had been more of it.
The translation was done beautifully and I will be keeping an eye out for any other works Christiana Hills translates in the future.
There is a plot, but that is not the main driver of the book. It's a meditation on humanity and how a life can be lived or wasted. One mode of conveying this is through a conversation occurring between the protagonist and a rabbit he accidentally shot. I especially enjoyed these aspects of the narrative and had wished there had been more of it.
The translation was done beautifully and I will be keeping an eye out for any other works Christiana Hills translates in the future.
June 8, 2014
La race humaine décrite et remise en question par un animal d'une façon originale à travers les mésaventures d'un jeune homme qui apprend la vie. Cela peut paraitre un peu lourd à lire et pourtant c'est tellement bien écrit que ça se lit tout seul :) J'ai bien aimé!
May 17, 2019
The Hunting Party wowed and entranced me early on, in chapter 1, as we are introduced to the rabbit, who in an internal dialogue reveals ambitions to lead a long full life and to fulfill the dreams of ‘his big imagination’ and who is almost immediately but accidentally shot by Tristan, a young gentle married man on his first hunt at the request of his wife. The accident brings Tristan to tears; he is that kind of man. Tristan emerges as a curious, gentle and quiet man, with 'an emptiness inside and around him', one would almost think, unspoiled – and perhaps it is this innocence that enables Tristan and the rabbit to have a rapport with one another – and later reveals that Tristan is not equipped to deal with dishonesty, which emerges as a key aspect of this story. So, in other words, we like Tristan, and the rabbit, right away. And the rabbit survives and has a small but important role through Agnes Desarthe’s book.
Tristan’s wife Emma, whom he loves deeply, seems the opposite, and whom Tristan describes as possessing ‘an innate sense of savagery … like the ancient peoples’. Emma has a very small active role in the story but we feel her presence throughout, and with Tristan, had recently moved to a small village in France. Emma appears to be a beautiful woman, possessing a carnality and even an aggressive nature. He reflects though that ‘their love has gone wrong’ and one senses that Tristan is worried and somewhat heart-broken, and one wonders what attracted Emma and Tristan to one another in the first place, why they fell in love, why they believed it to be an enduring love, and what compelled the gentleman and the savage to mate. Perhaps just a lust associated with their complementarity that had not unfortunately had time to dissipate before they decided to marry?
Hunting Party is extremely readable and light, though it has a great deal in it that gives reason for alarm. It is nonetheless throughout, like Tristan is able to remain, a gentle and kind and thoughtful book, and nowhere that I have noticed does it misstep into brutality or vulgarity – except for one brief quote I include below. It is a really smart book, full of imagination and humour, intrigue and drama, possibility and potential.
An accident causes the four members of the hunting party to separate, and there is a short period where Tristan and the wounded rabbit have an exchange of ideas, basically on what it means to be human. The rabbit is dismissive, summarizing the prime endeavour of the human as to be ceaselessly and irrationally obsessed with the overwhelming desire to make love: “We fuck to live; you live to fuck”. But in Tristan, Agnes Desarthe counters with one of the most beautiful philosophical statements that I have heard in a long time from any contemporary writer or thinker: “Your brain (rabbit) is too small and your heart is too lazy to understand the beauty, the grandeur, the glory of the energy that motivates and permeates us. I wouldn’t trade anything for my fall. I’m intoxicated with speed, and sometimes, when the chance for a moment’s respite distracts me from it, it makes me taste my comfort more, because I know it is fleeting. Little Rabbit, you will never know victory over the absurd, something we accomplish every day, every second of our existence …. (but) each of your actions is logical, useful, efficient. What relief, certainly, but what boredom! I am going to tell you what you will never have, what you must envy us for: what you are missing is the possibility to do anything you want, to act in spite of common sense, to wring the neck of productivity, reason, causality. We alone have the power to act against our own good, but believe me, sometimes by heading towards our loss, we access a supreme good, a superior quality of being, a real presence more intense than anything you could ever see or feel … we search, we wander, we make mistakes, and thanks to these detours, these refusals, we raise ourselves up; even from within our fall, we fly, we transcend".
Edwin
Tristan’s wife Emma, whom he loves deeply, seems the opposite, and whom Tristan describes as possessing ‘an innate sense of savagery … like the ancient peoples’. Emma has a very small active role in the story but we feel her presence throughout, and with Tristan, had recently moved to a small village in France. Emma appears to be a beautiful woman, possessing a carnality and even an aggressive nature. He reflects though that ‘their love has gone wrong’ and one senses that Tristan is worried and somewhat heart-broken, and one wonders what attracted Emma and Tristan to one another in the first place, why they fell in love, why they believed it to be an enduring love, and what compelled the gentleman and the savage to mate. Perhaps just a lust associated with their complementarity that had not unfortunately had time to dissipate before they decided to marry?
Hunting Party is extremely readable and light, though it has a great deal in it that gives reason for alarm. It is nonetheless throughout, like Tristan is able to remain, a gentle and kind and thoughtful book, and nowhere that I have noticed does it misstep into brutality or vulgarity – except for one brief quote I include below. It is a really smart book, full of imagination and humour, intrigue and drama, possibility and potential.
An accident causes the four members of the hunting party to separate, and there is a short period where Tristan and the wounded rabbit have an exchange of ideas, basically on what it means to be human. The rabbit is dismissive, summarizing the prime endeavour of the human as to be ceaselessly and irrationally obsessed with the overwhelming desire to make love: “We fuck to live; you live to fuck”. But in Tristan, Agnes Desarthe counters with one of the most beautiful philosophical statements that I have heard in a long time from any contemporary writer or thinker: “Your brain (rabbit) is too small and your heart is too lazy to understand the beauty, the grandeur, the glory of the energy that motivates and permeates us. I wouldn’t trade anything for my fall. I’m intoxicated with speed, and sometimes, when the chance for a moment’s respite distracts me from it, it makes me taste my comfort more, because I know it is fleeting. Little Rabbit, you will never know victory over the absurd, something we accomplish every day, every second of our existence …. (but) each of your actions is logical, useful, efficient. What relief, certainly, but what boredom! I am going to tell you what you will never have, what you must envy us for: what you are missing is the possibility to do anything you want, to act in spite of common sense, to wring the neck of productivity, reason, causality. We alone have the power to act against our own good, but believe me, sometimes by heading towards our loss, we access a supreme good, a superior quality of being, a real presence more intense than anything you could ever see or feel … we search, we wander, we make mistakes, and thanks to these detours, these refusals, we raise ourselves up; even from within our fall, we fly, we transcend".
Edwin
August 21, 2018
This is a novella translated from French to English. It has a meek Tristan being coerced by his wife Emma to join a hunting party with three other macho village men. Tristan and Emma had moved to the small town three years previously and Emma wanted Tristan to fit in with the locals.
Tristan does not plan on killing anything, but he gets a shot off just to prove he can shoot the gun. To his surprise, he hits a rabbit. Fortunately, he only wounds the creature, which he stuffs in his bag to hide it from his fellow hunters. The story takes a series of surreal twists from here.
The rabbit is intelligent and speaks through telepathy with Tristan. One of the hunters, Dumestre, falls in a hole as a storm approaches. As Tristan saves Dumestre, the other two go for help.
The book, filled with chapters sometimes only a page long, continues to tell the story of Tristan through a series of flashbacks. He was a mother’s boy and Emma resembles his dominant mother.
I enjoyed the first half of the book and even a little more. The flashbacks didn’t lose me. Just, as the book progressed toward the end, things became a little more bizarre and tragic.
Tristan does not plan on killing anything, but he gets a shot off just to prove he can shoot the gun. To his surprise, he hits a rabbit. Fortunately, he only wounds the creature, which he stuffs in his bag to hide it from his fellow hunters. The story takes a series of surreal twists from here.
The rabbit is intelligent and speaks through telepathy with Tristan. One of the hunters, Dumestre, falls in a hole as a storm approaches. As Tristan saves Dumestre, the other two go for help.
The book, filled with chapters sometimes only a page long, continues to tell the story of Tristan through a series of flashbacks. He was a mother’s boy and Emma resembles his dominant mother.
I enjoyed the first half of the book and even a little more. The flashbacks didn’t lose me. Just, as the book progressed toward the end, things became a little more bizarre and tragic.
August 5, 2020
“Initially, he doesn’t try to understand or translate the words Hector pronounces, which aren’t really words, but garlands - indivisible, twisted, undulating, turbulent, without beginning or end. Tristan tries above all else to convince his body that the new shapes around him must become as familiar as the ones he left behind”. - Agnès Desarthe, Hunting Party.
Have you ever had a feeling when picking up a book that has been accumulating dust on your shelves that you wished you’d have picked it up sooner? I received this ARC of Hunting Party by Agnès Desarthe sometime in 2018 and just picked up now. Oh what a mistake! I loved it! I wish I had read it sooner. It’s a beautiful coming-of-age story about a French boy whose mother dies and he’s sent to London. I love how the author describes that sense of loss at encountering a new language and a foreign culture. And the fact that the main character is called Tristan is no coincidence. I found many similarities with the old epic but I won’t spoil it for you. If you want to read more women, and more fiction translated by women. This is a good pick. Short, funny and easy. A very charming read.
Have you ever had a feeling when picking up a book that has been accumulating dust on your shelves that you wished you’d have picked it up sooner? I received this ARC of Hunting Party by Agnès Desarthe sometime in 2018 and just picked up now. Oh what a mistake! I loved it! I wish I had read it sooner. It’s a beautiful coming-of-age story about a French boy whose mother dies and he’s sent to London. I love how the author describes that sense of loss at encountering a new language and a foreign culture. And the fact that the main character is called Tristan is no coincidence. I found many similarities with the old epic but I won’t spoil it for you. If you want to read more women, and more fiction translated by women. This is a good pick. Short, funny and easy. A very charming read.
January 5, 2024
The earth caves in, a storm strikes, the flood waters rise, and all around Tristan the countryside and its people are shucking their layers, revealing their mucky truths and unabashed misdeeds. But Tristan is stroking an injured rabbit.
Literature is replete with unreliable-unlikable-quirky-sociopathic characters but there are not nearly enough protagonists who are genuinely good, warm-hearted people like Tristan. (I'm thinking of Piranesi, as another example). It was wonderful to spend time with him.
Literature is replete with unreliable-unlikable-quirky-sociopathic characters but there are not nearly enough protagonists who are genuinely good, warm-hearted people like Tristan. (I'm thinking of Piranesi, as another example). It was wonderful to spend time with him.
March 29, 2024
1.5 stars. i really did not get this book, i really did not like this book. he fucks his cousin??? his wife destroyed his life and then cheated on him??? the man he saved beat him then ran away?? what happened to the other two men? idk it never says. the last line was SO STUPID AND PRETENTIOUS!! the rabbit doesn’t even add shit to the plot and the only semi interesting thing was tristians past which was horribly written. bye!!
September 24, 2017
Une très belle surprise. Un livre que j'ai pris à la bibliothèque, ne connaissant ni le livre, ni l'auteur, et j'ai été très agréablement surprise!
Le "dialogue" entre l'homme et le lapin est intéressant, avec une analyse de la société humaine par rapport à celle des animaux. L'histoire est prenante, et les relations entre les personnages intéressantes.
Le "dialogue" entre l'homme et le lapin est intéressant, avec une analyse de la société humaine par rapport à celle des animaux. L'histoire est prenante, et les relations entre les personnages intéressantes.
July 10, 2021
Fascinating short read - must love the nuances and philosophy that French authors just have instinctively. The introduction is a must-read but I read it afterwards to let it all sink in.
June 3, 2020
Den här boken köpte jag på flygplatsen i London för sju år sen, som en av de första franska böcker jag skaffade. Sen dess har jag flera gånger tagit mig an första sidan (precis som huvudkaraktären gör med en engelsk roman, kom jag på nu), men aldrig riktigt kommit nån vart eller fattat vad den handlar om. När jag nu läste den var den över all förväntan, fin och mångbottnad berättelse. Symbolrikt, roligt och modernt språk. Spännande också, lätt att läsa trots sitt djup. 5/5 pga kaniner
June 11, 2022
Jag fick den här boken rekommenderad för mig och många verkar ju väldigt lyriska över den. Tyvärr var den inte riktigt i min smak. Kanske var huvudpersonen, den tafatte (men ändå kompetente) Tristan för främmande för mig, och f.ö. inte bara han. Men den ger ändå en del att tänka på, inte minst sista meningen. Sammanfattar den hela boken?
December 16, 2018
Tristan un chasseur de vice se retrouve dans une partie de chasse qui tourne mal les règles d’honneur au pose les participants un déluge arrive qui donne à Tristan l’occasion de réfléchir sur son passé
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January 13, 2022I picked up this book in error - I was thinking of Lucy Foley's The Hunting Party. I started it because one never knows what's between the pages but set is aside after about 60 pages - there was nothing about it that was holding my interest.
April 28, 2019
Interesting story. Fast paced, short chapters. I'm sure I didnt fully grasp the philosophical point of the story, but enjoyed it nonetheless.
April 7, 2023
Such great writing. A surreal story that keeps getting more and more odd. In a great way.
April 11, 2024
Très bien écrit, mais parfois difficile à comprendre.
August 10, 2021
Quand on en dit pas assez, en fait, on ne dit rien.
March 9, 2015
Une surprise! Bien écrit et plein de rebondissements. Un lapin qui parle et qui philosophe...j'étais pas certaine d'embarquer mais j'ai bien aimé malgré le triste sujet.
March 5, 2016
Inlägg om boken: http://laserskan.blogspot.se/2016/03/...
May 15, 2016
C'est magnifique! It is a book about the great questions in life and the human existance, written so gracefully and elegant, from the perspective of man and a rabbit.
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October 9, 2018Read in English. Short and beautifully written.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews