The Incorrigible Optimists Club: A Review
The book Le Club des Incorrigibles Optimistes was written by the French writer and TV script writer Jean-Michel Guenassia in 2009.Guenassia attempts to capture the feeling and the pop culture of the '60s in the City of Lights, Paris. Being sociopolitical, cultural and very personal, the book deals with the war in Algeria, the golden times of rock 'n' roll and the critical decade of adolescence of Michel Marini, the protagonist.
Michel joins a chess club in the back room of a bistro that is named Le Club des Incorrigibles Optimistes (that is The Incorrigible Optimists Club), where he meets influential figures like Joseph Kessel and Jean-Paul Sartre along with other idealists from communist Eastern countries of Europe.
The book is very engaging. The characters stay with you until after you have finished the book and I personally found it very hard to let them go off my mind even months later. It's very simple in language and what it tries to say, but very sophisticated and well-written and the same time.
It leaves you with several unanswered questions in the end, but the aim of the book is not to offer you the whole story, rather the part of the story that has the most to say.
Splendid book!
A book that I would read again.
Till later,
Lilian White
