A Review of "Voice Over"

VOICE OVER by Céline Curiol – A Review

“Voice Over” is the story of a woman who has fallen in love with a man who loves and lives with another woman. In the character’s mind she develops scenarios with him even as she has intimate interactions with other men. Curiol’s nameless main character works as a public announcer at the gare de Nord – a metro in the heart of Paris. Daily, at work, she watches a bustle of people make their way to wherever, she doesn’t know, but daily, she judges their actions and their refusal to look at her – to make contact with her – as she watches them. At the end of each day, her life is filled with longing and fantasy about this man who she loves and who seems to love her back because he agrees to meet with her regularly at cafés where they kiss, talk and hold hands.

As the story heightens in risk and emotional intensity, Ms. Curiol instills moments of embarrassed sympathy in the reader – you feel you should look away but find Curiol’s writing too compelling to stop reading.

This short novel at 255 pages is profoundly artistic with brushstrokes of human condition normally found written by the masters which leads me to wonder if Curiol has channeled the likes of Maupassant or Flaubert. But, Curiol’s writing is so vastly unique and pristine that it seems she’s begun a brand new form of art, one that will stand apart for centuries to come and will hang in a room at the Louvre.

While on a plane traveling to the desert, I wanted to reach to passengers in front of me, behind me and stop them as they passed by my row just to read snippets of “Voice Over” to them, so they too could appreciate Curiol’s art.

As a writer, I kept thinking to myself, how did she do that? As a writing instructor, I’ll be using “Voice Over” as example.

There are only two things that sadden me about Ms. Céline Curiol’s “Voice Over”: (1) that it ended and (2) that I won’t soon be reading anything this magnificent for a long while. Kudos, Ms. Curiol, “Voice Over” is sheer ecstasy. – Review by Susan Wingate, author of “Bobby’s Diner” and “Of the Law” (March 3, 2009)