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The Mystery Guest: A True Story - Paperback
$18.00
In stock
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by Grégoire Bouillier (Author), Ben Truman (Translator)
"Somewhere out in the woeful constellation of literary comparison, a lonely satellite drifts between remote stars--Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway, The Stranger and When Harry Met Sally . . . This perfect little book [says]: We are human, heartbroken, grim, and funny in our despair, yet hopeful and miracle-prone, and some of us are French." --John Hodgman
A "frank and wry, mad and graceful" true story about getting dumped, and getting over it. (Slate, Best Books of the Year)
When the phone rang on a cold November afternoon in 1990, Grégoire Bouillier had no way of knowing that the caller was the woman who had left him, without warning, five years before. And he couldn't have guessed why she was calling: not to say she was sorry, not to explain why she'd vanished from his life, but to invite him to a party. A birthday party. For a woman he'd never met.
Here is the unlikely but true account of how one man got over a poken heart, regained his faith in literature, participated--by mistake--in a work of performance art, threw away his turtlenecks, spent his rent money on a 1964 bordeaux that nobody ever drank, and fell in love again. Named one of the year's best books by Slate and the San Francisco Chronicle when it first appeared in English, The Mystery Guest is a "sad, funny and vivid" memoir that "gives shape to the painful yet somehow hilarious disjunction that is the residue of a shattered love affair." (--Erica Wagner, The New York Times Book Review).
Author Biography
Grégoire Bouillier was born in Tizi Ouzou, Algeria, and raised in Paris. A former editor of the magazine Science et Vie, he is the author of four works of autobiography, incluidng Report on Myself and Le Dossier M. Having worked as a painter and journalist, he published his first memoir, The Mystery Guest, when he was forty years old.
A London native, Ben Truman lives in New York. Sheila Heti is the author of ten books, including the novels Pure Colour, Motherhood, and How Should a Person Be?Pay with
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Standard U.S. returns are accepted for eligible new, unopened items within 30 days of carrier delivery. Returns are by mail. Customers are responsible for standard return shipping, there is no restocking fee, and standard exchanges are not offered. Once an approved return is received and inspected, the refund is issued to the original payment method within 5 business days. Damaged, defective, or incorrect items are handled at no return-shipping cost to the customer.
Return eligibility is subject to the full policy. Opened, read, or unsealed books with broken seals or visible wear are final sale. Digital downloads, gift cards, and personalized products are non-refundable. Original shipping charges are not refunded for standard returns. Contact us within 7 days of delivery about damaged, defective, or incorrect items.
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