Customer Reviews (3)

One of my favorite books
Yes, it's a love story, but it's also much more. L'ecume des jours stays with you forever. I read it while attending French high-school and still keep a vivid memory of different scenes - such as the walls in the appartment growing and getting more narrow, depending on the general mood and atmosphere, or the pianocktail, a piano that spits out drinks that match the tunes... just one advice: take your time while reading it. Each page is worth exploring.

Sweet as froth, but deeper than a daydream
Boris Vian was born in Ville d'Avery in 1920 and spent much of his brief life haunting the jazz clubs of Paris. As a surrealist, he was closely associated with writers such as Queneau and Bataille, but he also knew Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. As the translator of Van Vogt, he played a major part in rekindling French interest in science-fiction. He achieved instant notoriety with the publication of "J'Irai Cracher Sur Vos Tombes" in 1947, a book which was confiscated by the police and which formed the basis of the much-maligned film "I Spit on your Graves".

Published in the same year, "L'Ecume des Jours" -- or as published in English, "Froth on the Daydream" -- marked the beginning of a radical departure in Vian's career. Superficially a love story exploring the hopes and foibles of untroubled youth, it manages to combine the fantastic, the grotesque and the poignant in a matchless blend. The result is a book which has survived the test of time so well that it seems even more appropriate now than when it was written.

The opening scene shows Colin in his bathroom, carefully trimming his eyelids with a pair of nail-clippers. He lives in an ideal world where mechanical gadgets perform the mundane tasks and where all the best cooks swear by Freud (Clement rather than Sigmund). This utopian paradise is described with an endearing naivety, rendered all the more charming by the improbable characters who float through it, sometimes literally.

Colin's friends, Chick and Lisa, are disciples of the philosopher Jean Pulse Heartre, whose lectures they attend with passionate zeal. When Colin meets a girl named Chloe and decides to marry her, he is so ecstatic that he gives away a quarter of his fortune to Chick and Lisa so that they may also get married. Chick, however, fritters away the doublezoons on copies of Jean Pulse Heartre's works, including "A Bouquet of Belches" bound in coarse-grained morocco and "Choice Before Eructation" printed on an unperforated toilet-roll.

After Colin and Chloe's wedding, the dream begins to turn sour. Colin's favourite cook, Nicolas, grows surly and indolent. Chloe falls ill on her honeymoon and discovers a mutant water-lily expanding in her right lung. Chick spends the remainder of Colin's money on a pair of Jean Pulse Heartre's trousers and a pipe bearing the marks of his teeth. In anger and frustration, Colin slices off the head of an ice-rink attendant and kicks it into a ventilation shaft, suffocating most of the other skaters. The colours of the city start to fade and the landscapes become monotonous and bleak.

When Chloe's illness becomes more serious, Colin is finally forced to seek employment to pay her medical bills. He finds a job in an armaments factory, growing rifle-barrels out of his vital organs while being buried in a mound of soft earth. Unfortunately, he is ill-qualified for the task and can only produce blunderbusses. As Colin and Chick sink deeper into poverty, Lisa runs amok with a heart-snatcher and kills the bookseller who provides Chick with Heartre's books and even the great philosopher himself (his heart is shaped like a tetrahedron). Chick dies at the hands of the police and Chloe ends up in a pauper's grave.

Throughout "Froth on the Daydream", Vian maintains an air of ingenuous implausibility, but the whimsy conceals a darker vein that leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste. His particular skill lies in rendering the totally absurd not merely acceptable but also somehow logical. This novel remains the best possible introduction to literary surrealism as well as one of the very best examples of the art.

What a wonderful love...
One of the best book I ever read. So deeply moving. So deeply romantic. A passion. Two people. One love. One life. The first time I read it I just fell in love with it. The way it's writen is absolutely brilliant. Boris Vian wrote as usual: funny words, funny sentences about such true and real subjects! Love Work War Death

One of the most heart-breaking love story ever... ... Read more