Absinth (French Literature) by Seb Doubinsky

Absinth (French Literature) Reviews

• 
  MJ Nicholls

  Like Pablo Katchadjian’s What To Do, released around the same time, Absinth (no e), is a refreshing rendezvous with the peculiar, featuring a cast of characters constructed around the wit of the author, narratives interspersed with interruptions from God and rolling news reports. The free-floating form and fluid fun of the three main stories will keep the reader tickled for the one sitting required.
• 
  Zachary Tanner

  Just finished rereading this one for the first time in years. The book that turned me on to the City-States cycle. Read a few months after I read through The Babylonian Trilogy, Omega Grey, Song of Synth, and White City. This one is an outlier among the others, more ambitious and literal in its direct portrayal of the heavenly and mythological sub mechanisms at work below the surface of the other books. Written in expansive, yet terse prose, where a chapter break may sometimes be a news break a few hours after the antecedent one (another news break), or perhaps we might lapse a matter of months or even a year as in the case of Iris’s t-break, all in a chapter book of less than 200 pages. It takes a poet to write a novel like this. And undoubtedly it takes a French-American author like Doubinsky to metaphysically exhibit how the fall of western civilization is being wasted on the Americans.
• 
  Andrea

  seb was definitely high as a kite writing this bc this book bleeds adrenaline and chaos.
• 
  Jordan N

  Do you want a window into the many possible futures of chaos? Then read Absinth! The presience of this short novel cannot be understated. For example one chapter ends with the news "the president will address the nation at 7 p.m. tonight from his bunker beneath the white house."
  It is hard to tell who can tell the future. Is it Iris, the clairvoyant, or Seb, the author? Beautiful the way Iris uses the past to tell the future, would you believe it? Who knew the reason the USA isn't the new Roman Empire, ancient Greece or Egypt is because they don't have enough of the old gods on their side. Well the days of Jove the one true God are over and the Western world is about to be thrown by the fact that even Jesus himself has problems with authority. This book is funny and mystical, a bit dorky and sexy, before it's time and right on time.
• 
  Paméla

  Méfiez-vous quand même de Seb Doubinsky dont l'Absinthe est l'antidote parfait contre la torpeur, dans une librairie moite (que je tiens précisément ce jour, en remplacement de la taulière habituelle). Il tue tout le monde, ne respecte rien et fait n'importe quoi. Je pouffe de rire à tous les virages. Il nous met un beau bordel sur Terre, et même ailleurs, et si tu n'es pas content c'est pareil. Saynètes parfaites si tu n'as plus de cerveau ou n'en veux plus pour le moment.
  Attention toutefois, il subsiste beaucoup de fautes dans le livre, qui mériterait une relecture complète (au moins pour l'epub, si le format papier n'est pas tiré nouvellement de suite), ce qui gâche un peu la fête.