Le Sens de ma vie by Romain Gary
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Highly entertaining series of interviews conducted few months before the writer killed himself, and revealing a whole life shaped by fiction.
From an early age, Romain Gary will try to conform to the life his mother had imagined for him, that in spite of being born Russian he would become a famous French writer and diplomat. He will lie to her, hiding his failure to become an officer in the French air force. She will lie to him, hiding her own death for three whole years ! He will lie to the whole world and to himself, during his years as the French speaker for the United Nations. He will lie to the publishing world by winning the Prix Goncourt under a false name.
Romain Gary reveals these lies all along these short interviews, in the exact opposite attempt of Cendrars's tetralogy: use his talents as a writer to de-mystify his own life.
View all my reviews
