One of my favorite authors!

Oddly, I haven't read this one yet. I must correct that!

I discovered Besson via his breakout "In the Absence of Men." It's a truly brilliant read if you haven't encountered it yet. Besson is a genuine sensation in France, in ways that simply don't happen for literary novelists in the U.S. ... or maybe anywhere in the Anglosphere.

He often treats queer subjects, and his storytelling is always cracking, but his fame justly derives from his lyrical, poetic mastery of the French literary language, which is quite distinct from spoken French and even from quotidian written French

That might be why you were originally put off by the tenses changing. I can see a translator seriously struggling with that convention.

I can recommend the English translation of "In the Absence of Men," which is how I discovered Besson. It's just a gorgeous work of art. An adolescent forms a close friendship with Marcel Proust, and then the boy falls in consummated love with a family servant who soon goes off to fight in World War I.

One summer, in the absence of both those men, the boy writes his story. It's as heartbreaking as it is achingly beautiful.

When Besson published Absense, he almost immediately became a literary star.

Very much worth exploring! Thanks for the review and for another excellent addition to my reading list.