Homme qui savait

the long version

Maurice Lesca, the sour hero of A Man Who Knows, is fifty-seven - older than Bove's other protagonists, not much wiser, no less painfully comical in his failures and confusions. Though he is well educated, financial and amorous miscalculations have leveled him. A failed doctor, he lives in poverty with his widowed sister, whom he sees only at mealtime. Kept afloat by odd handouts from family and connections, Lesca also milks his remaining acquaintances. When he starts visiting a divorcee who runs a dim little bookshop and encourages her to extort more money from her ex-husband, he begins to sow the seeds of dissatisfaction and distrust that will infect his world. But Lesca is a survivor, he will always survive in the modern city. A Man Who Knows was written in 1942 but not published in France until 1985. It is the last of Bove's major novels and the most mature example of his characteristic method.