Towards Beauty, by David Foenkinos

Towards Beauty, by David Foenkinos
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Discuss foenkinos is to get closer to one of the fundamental authors of the current narrative, with that generational change that points to the classic literature of a century from now, of the narrator who reflected the intrahistory of a XNUMXst century submerged between individualism and alienation as the main conflict of the Western world.

For this reason, a new publication by this author should be received with that almost informative interest in the directions that the avant-garde of literature is taking.

The novel "Towards Beauty" envelops us in that existentialist enigma taken as a narrative foundation. Because the figure of the protagonist, the dark Antoine Duris, has that double pleasure in knowing what has moved him to make his decisions and, in turn, revealing what he is looking for in that abrupt turn of life.

From professor of Fine Arts in Lyon to watchman in Paris at the Musée d'Orsay. Thus, right off the bat, as a kind of self-imposed punishment or as an intention to merge with those works until they disappear, like Dorian Gray, camouflaged in the works that he contemplates with fervent devotion.

Nothing is accidental. The portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne is Antoine's main object of observation; her nineteenth-century look of the painter made a model for the occasion. An almost cubist look but full of expressiveness and latent beauty. Eyes that take Antoine away for some unknown reason that fascinates Mathilde, the museum manager.

Antoine's decision to abandon his life transforms Foenkinos into an enigma worthy of a great thriller. And in turn, the residue of the enigmatic procedure is approached with that existentialist point that connects with the beauty of a canvas, of a look, of the endless struggle between the fleeting and the eternal.

Engaged in that truth about Antoine, we walk through a beautiful story, sometimes lyrical and at other moments starkly prosaic, the eternal balance between reality and fantasy, between assumptions about those around us and the most soulless motives that finally appear in all extracted truth from the well of being and living with pain, guilt or betrayal.

At times we observe Antoine as a character on a canvas that in turn contemplates the beauty of Jeanne Hebuterne's gaze. Art can explain everything when, in a sudden stroke of fortune, you end up deciphering what each brushstroke traces underneath the figurative.

You can now buy the novel Towards Beauty, the new book by David Foenkinos, here:

Towards Beauty, by David Foenkinos
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