A
Literary Saloon
&
Site of Review.

Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.


Contents:
Main
the Best
the Rest
Review Index
Links

weblog

crQ

RSS

to e-mail us:


support the site



In Association with Amazon.com


In association with Amazon.com - UK


In association with Amazon.ca - Canada


the Complete Review
the complete review - fiction



The Emotions

by
Jean-Philippe Toussaint


general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

To purchase The Emotions


Title: The Emotions
Author: Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Genre: Novel
Written: 2020 (Eng. 2025)
Length: 153 pages
Original in: French
Availability: The Emotions - US
The Emotions - UK
The Emotions - Canada
Les émotions - Canada
Les émotions - France
Die Gefühle - Deutschland
from: Bookshop.org (US)
  • French title: Les émotions
  • Translated by Mark Polizzotti

- Return to top of the page -


Our Assessment:

B : solid scenes and thoughts in a time of great changes, both personal and political

See our review for fuller assessment.



Review Summaries
Source Rating Date Reviewer
TLS . 9/10/2020 Russell Williams


  From the Reviews:
  • "(T)he major mood of Les Émotions is one of loss. While the opening and closing sections are fond, erotically tinged reminiscences, the middle places us firmly in the sadness of Detrez's present. (...) Toussaint's previous novels have hardly been apolitical, but explicit political engagement has never been a priority. (...) But here, Toussaint approaches something resembling engagement through precisely this detached observation. He does so in the way he delicately draws attention to the subtle, intimate moments of emotion -- glimpsed through glances, gestures, atmospheres. Toussaint seems to be striving to recapture the affective landscape from the populists and radicals who, through their bombast and their mendacity, have dominated it in recent years. In his quietude, Toussaint is re-asserting the human through the banal, through the quotidian, articulating a near-silent resistance in the face of the current predicaments facing Europe and the rest of the world." - Russell Williams, Times Literary Supplement

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

- Return to top of the page -


The complete review's Review:

       The Emotions is narrated by Jean Detrez, who works at the European Commission (EC). (It is the second in a cycle of novels; the first, La clé USB (2019), also narrated by Detrez, has unfortunately not been translated into English yet.) It is a novel not only of Brussels but very much of the EC: in working at the European Commission Detrez has followed in the footsteps of his father, a one-time commissioner, while younger brother Pierre is an architect who took over the family (on the maternal side) firm and won the 1996 competition to renovate the Berlaymont building -- the enormous Brussel headquarters of the EC --, though it is a project he 'gradually disengaged from' as the long process went on --; the Berlaymont building also figures quite prominently repeatedly in the book.
       Detrez works in 'strategic forecasting' -- envisioning what the future holds, but while much of the first section of the three-part novel is devoted to his experiences at a "futurology retreat" in the summer of 2016, The Emotions is much more a novel of reminiscence, looking back rather than forward.
       The year 2016 is a bad one: there were the terrorist bombings at Brussels airport and the Maelbeek metro station in March; in the summer came the catastrophic Brexit referendum; in the fall, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States -- all events Detrez's father still lives through but which are: "blow upon blow, deathblow upon deathblow". The year finishes him off as well, the father dying in December, 2016.
       Detrez recalls thinking, when the results of the Brexit referendum were announced, of what his father must be feeling:

His world, the world he had always known, was faltering. Crises were accumulating in Europe, populism was on the rise, everywhere, inexorably. The humanism that my father had always zealously defended seemed in worse shape than ever. Brexit was only the latest manifestation -- the most spectacular, the most drastically unexpected -- of this poisonous decay.
       At the futurology retreat, the participants' goal is to: "envision the situation around 2030" -- but Detrez continues to cling to the past, reflective far beyond just dealing with his father's death. He begins the third section of the novel noting that: "In life there are decisive moments, certain days or hours that one can never forget", with events from 2010 -- the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjöll, and the resulting disruption to European air travel -- the background for the decisive events recounted in that section, but each of the three rather distinct parts to the novel center around past times and memory.
       In the first part, memory is in part clouded -- the account seemingly spurred by and ultimately coming to revolve around: "that photo that was still in my phone, that photo I had never deleted". Early on, Detrez wonders:
     How deeply can we forget what happens to us ? I might never have asked myself that question if, months later, I hadn't found a compromising photo on my phone.
       Much of his account -- of his time at that retreat -- is then closely and precisely recalled -- yet as to the photo and the events surrounding it he admits it's lost in a fog: "I'm not entirely sure what happened after that".
       Women he has been close to -- fleetingly or for the longer hauls -- figure prominently in each of the novel's parts. His wives, for one, -- though in the case of second wife he acknowledges already in the novel's second sentence that, back in 2016: "Diane and I were in the final hours of our life together". But in both the first and last section Detrez is swept up in the moments.
       The three parts of the novel are quite distinct. There is some overlap -- not least in Dutrez's roles in the EU bureaucracy -- and they all are all similar extended exercises in reflection on personal past and life, turning on specific events and encounters. It makes for a somewhat oddly shaped novel -- perhaps functioning better if seen as having a place in a larger cycle of works (as it is apparently meant to be) rather than stand-alone. Nevertheless, Detrez's reflections and accounts are intriguing, and if not quite making a whole the novel is engaging throughout.

- M.A.Orthofer, 15 August 2025

- Return to top of the page -


Links:

The Emotions: Reviews: Jean-Philippe Toussaint: Other books by Jean-Philippe Toussaint under review: Other books of interest under review:
  • See Index of French literature

- Return to top of the page -


About the Author:

       Jean-Philippe Toussaint was born in Brussels in 1957.

- Return to top of the page -

© 2025 the complete review

Main | the New | the Best | the Rest | Review Index | Links