Faces on the Tip of My Tongue

Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020 Meetings, partings, loves and losses in rural France are dissected with compassion. The late wedding guest isn't your cousin but a drunken chancer. The driver who gives you a lift isn't going anywhere but off the road. Snow settles on your car in the middle of summer and the glitter found between the pages of a borrowed novel takes you into another world. Pagano's stories weave together the mad, the mysterious and the dispossessed in rural France with honesty and humour. This is a superb cumulative collection from a unique French voice.