ABSTRACT
Several novels published during the past two decades or so by the Editions de Minuit are marked by tongue-in-cheek uses of sub-literary genres. Distancing effects, stylistic quirks, and, typically, the absence of genuinely described characters or settings make it clear that plot is to be taken only half-seriously. Stories have too many twists to be plausible; characters are blatantly insubstantial and given incongruous names; when one expects suspense to grow, it diminishes. Such novels provoke increasingly uncomfortable chuckles in the reader. Christian Gailly, a fourth writer associated with this new novel's group, summarizes the spirit of this kind of fiction by eschewing the terms "droll" or "light" and simply points out that in such works "you enter a world, modestly and gently, that resembles absolutely nothing else." Indeed, Gailly's methodically impassioned characters rarely feel at home anywhere.
