Live Fast: A Novel [Hardcover]

Winner of the Prix Goncourt 

A powerful autobiographical novel of loss, an unforgettable memoir of grief, and the small decisions that define the course of fate.

Paced and structured with the inevitable suspense of a countdown, Brigitte Giraud’s tense and haunting work of literary fiction follows one woman’s relentless quest to comprehend the motorcycle accident that took the life of her partner Claude at age 41.

The narrator ofLive Fastrecounts the chain of events that led up to the fateful accident, tracing the tiny, maddening twists of fate that might have prevented its tragic outcome. Each chapter asks the rhetorical question, “what if,” departing from an image or memory from early years in Algeria during the war, to moving to the suburbs of Lyon, buying and renovating a home where they could “put down their suitcase for a whole life.” A sensitive elegy to her husband and a subtle, precise vision of a lasting love,Live Fastis a moving and electrifying portrait of love and loss, reminding us that living itself can be dangerous.

An exemplary work of autofiction...An indelible tableau of grief. -Publishers Weekly (starred review)

An autobiographical novel of great formal and emotional urgency... beneath the 'if only' ache, there is a wild desire to know. Even if the narrator could undo all the accidents that preceded her husband’s...a vexing mystery would remain: What possessed a husband and father, in early middle age, to ride to work that day on something portentously called a Fireblade?... Alongside its agonized desire to undo time and story, Live Fastreflects on where exactly our individual desires arrive from.   -New York Times

An incandescent meditation on love and grief. -People

“Live Fastis a small, crushing masterpiece of grief. Giraud does what the best autobiograplc—