A tragicomic novel narrated by a wine-drinking bar patron named Broken Glass who hangs out at a place called Credit Gone West, whose proprietor, Stubborn Snail gives Broken Glass a notebook in which to record stories about the people around them. I'm tempted to keep that sentence going because that's how Mabanckou writes the book: there are no periods, and some paragraphs go for pages. Somehow, it worked for me, probably because of Broken Glass's elements of carnival and the grotesque. I particularly enjoyed the tension between the immediacy of all the bodily functions and smells, and the desire to commit those stories to history and memory.

(I received a copy of the book from the publisher.)

I wrote more about Broken Glass on my blog, here. ( )

Good fun - chaotic, rude and silly. Read it in one sitting I think. ( )

Voici un auteur manifestement fâché avec la ponctuation car, à part les virgules, il n'y a pas un seul point quelconque, ni de majuscules. Mais ne vous arrêtez pas à cela. Verre Cassé va nous conter les histoires singulières des assidus du Crédit a voyagé, un bar qui pourrait se trouver dans n'importe quelle ville d'Afrique noire.

L'auteur, Alain Mabanckou, a un talent certain de conteur. Je me suis laissée entraîner sans aucune difficulté dans les méandres des récits de vie qu'il nous présente avec infiniment de tendresse, malgré la souffrance et les malheurs que les protagonistes traversent.

Mais n'allez pas croire que l'histoire est simpliste. Car Mabanckou défie à tout moment son lecteur en émaillant son texte de références littéraires.
Ainsi un des clients raconte à Verre cassé que sa femme l'a fait passer pour un pédophile et se défend : "est-ce que tu me vois, moi, souiller le vestiaire de l'enfance, est-ce que tu me vois, moi, arracher les bourgeons, est-ce que tu me vois, moi, tirer sur les enfants, c'est impossible" et plus loin : " (un) policier de nationalité féminine (...) a dit que même mort elle me piétinerait, qu'elle irait cracher sur ma tombe, elle a dit que je ressemblais à un marin rejeté par la mer, que je devais savoir que chaque crime a son châtiment, (...)" et donc, si vous ne connaissez pas l'oeuvre du prix Nobel japonais Oé, celle de Vian, de Mishima, de Dostoïevski, vous êtes passés à côté de ses clins d'oeil. ( )

Un consiglio: non guardate la “Nota al testo” prima di aver letto il romanzo fino alla fine. Vi divertirete così a scoprire, riga dopo riga, titoli di libri e citazioni camuffate di una folla di scrittori e personaggi storici di ogni orizzonte.
“Pezzi di vetro” – un Bukowski africano di periferia (di Pointe-Noire), ex maestro espulso dalla scuola e alcolizzato – viene convinto da Lumaca testarda, il proprietario del bar di cui è più che cliente, a scrivere un libro sugli habitué del locale: un microcosmo di soggetti come Pampers, il Tipografo, Casimir il geografo, Rubinetta… E, inevitabilmente, parla anche di sé.
Un mondo alla Brassens in chiave congolese. E una delle migliori cose di Mabanckou. ( )

Set in Congo-Brazzaville (homeland of the author), all the non-action takes place in a bar entitled Le Credit a voyage (Credit has gone on a journey), where the bar owner L'Escargot Entete (the stubborn snail) gives a blank notebook to the bar's longest term habitue, Verre Casse (broken glass). He demands that Verre Casse write down the story of the bar, that is, the stories told to him by other patrons of the bar, those, like the man who wears Pampers & the man who once lived in France & worked at the print shop that produced the magazine Paris Match, who are as at the end of the line as the narrator himself. The narrator lives up to his nickname. He is truly a broken glass that can be neither emptied nor filled. He was once an elementary school teacher, one who as we might say "went off his rocker" & was finally fired for his bizarre behavior. He's an inveterate drunk. In his sixties, he seems to have spent the past several decades as a permanent fixture of the bar, drinking several bottles of plonk each day, staggering out to piss (& speak affectionately to)an old mango tree in the yard. One of the most bizarre scenes entails a pissing contest between a woman named Robinette & a man named Casimir (not one of the regulars). This is truly a battle of the titans. Robinette loses the contest, as is appropriate in a novel in which a certain misogyny underlies all. This version of misogyny couples with sanctification of the narrator's own mother who jumped into the river & drowned. The author references French & world literature throughout. Reading was the road the narrator chose as a young boy. But this path, at the end of the day, only leads him to Le Credit a voyage bar & perhaps his own last day, his own trip to the river to drown. The novels of Albert Camus came to mind repeatedly while I was reading Verre Casse, especially The Fall, with its fog-enshrouded Amsterdam bar & its judge-penitent. Both novels feature unreliable narrators. In fact, all who tell their stories, both the narrator & those who confess / protest to him are unreliable. Camus's The First Man is also evoked; Camus's own impoverished childhood in the streets & schools of Algiers & his own intense love for his silent, illiterate mother. I suspect that allusions to the social & political history of Congo-Brazzaville are also embedded in the novel. As I am completely uninformed about the country (other than knowing that it was once a French colony)I am unable to discern what these might mean. ( )