Live Fast

Giraud’s 2022 Goncourt Prize-winning novel, her English-language debut, is an exemplary work of autofiction focused on the death of her husband, Claude, 20 years earlier. In it, Giraud scrutinizes her conversations with Claude and the decisions that might have led to his fatal accident while riding her brother’s motorcycle. It had been parked in the garage at the house they’d planned to fix up and move into from their shabby apartment in suburban Lyon, and Giraud is galled to remember how she insisted on buying the house, even though it was too expensive and impractical (“I’d just paved the way for the accident, and I’d done so of my own free will”). In their zeal, they get the keys earlier than is technically permitted, and agree to keep her brother’s bike in the garage while he goes on vacation. Claude, a music critic and motorcycle lover, can’t resist taking it for a spin. In taut prose, Giraud pinpoints ominous signs portending Claude’s fatal crash, such as his love for the Lou Reed song “Live Fast Die Young,” and she ties it all together with an elegy to the life she and Claude planned to have together. It’s an indelible tableau of grief. Agent: Georges Borchardt, Georges Borchardt, Inc. (Feb.)