Oster, Christian 1949–

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Oster, Christian 1949–

PERSONAL:

Born 1949.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Paris, France.

CAREER:

Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Prix Médicis, 1999, for Mon grand appartement.

WRITINGS:

Volley-ball, Editions de Minuit (Paris, France), 1989.

L'aventure, Editions de Minuit (Paris, France), 1993.

Le Pont d'Arcueil Editions de Minuit (Paris, France), 1994.

Paul au téléphone, Editions de Minuit (Paris, France), 1996.

Le pique-nique, Editions de Minuit (Paris, France), 1997.

Loin d'Odile, Editions de Minuit (Paris, France), 1998.

Mon grand appartement, Minuit (Paris France), 1999, published in English as My Big Apartment, translated by Jordan Stump, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2002.

(Editor, with Hilmar Hohn) Badische Zeiten, Verlag der Badischen Zeitung (Freiburg, Germany), 2000.

Une femme de ménage, Minuit (Paris, France), 2001, published in English as A Cleaning Woman, translated by Mark Polizzotti, Other Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Dans le train, Minuit (Paris, France), 2002.

Les rendez-vous, Minuit (Paris, France), 2003.

L'imprévu, Minuit (Paris, France), 2005, published in English as The Unforeseen: A Novel, translated by Adriana Hunter, Other Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Sur la dune, Minuit (Paris, France), 2007.

ADAPTATIONS:

Une femme de ménage was adapted as a film in 2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

Novelist Christian Oster is perhaps best known to American readers through The Housekeeper, a film version of his novel Une femme de ménage, translated into English as A Cleaning Woman. The book explores the unlikely relationship that develops between an middle-aged man and the younger woman he hires to clean his apartment. Jacques has lived in squalor since his wife, Constance, left him six months earlier. Finally he decides to hire a housecleaner. But Laura is not the efficient worker he had expected. She does a cursory job of dusting, comes in late, and appears unmotivated. Yet Jacques begins to find himself intrigued by her. He makes excuses to be home in the middle of the day so he can watch her at work, and he worries that she might one day quit. When Laura suddenly asks if she can move into the apartment—she is temporarily homeless after breaking up with her boyfriend—Jacques agrees. Before long they are sleeping together. When they take a vacation at the beach, however, Laura falls in love with a younger man and Jacques is devastated. By chance he sees another woman, Helene, at the beach and follows her into the water; she is too strong a swimmer for him, though, and he almost drowns. Saved by two passersby, he sits on the beach as the novel ends, listening to Helene talk, feeling once again a spark of interest in life.

A writer for Kirkus Reviews found little to admire in A Cleaning Woman, describing the novel as a "vapid and pretentious" story that does not satisfactorily develop any of its themes. World Literature Today contributor Bettina L. Knapp, however, appreciated the book as worthwhile exploration of Jacques's need for order and sameness. Though Knapp found Oster's prose "dry," the critic felt that the novel ends with a message of salvation that makes an important point.

Mon grand appartement, translated as My Big Apartment, again focuses on an obsessive protagonist. Gavarine, who narrates the story, loses his job, the briefcase in which he keeps the keys to his apartment in Paris, and his girlfriend. Not knowing what else to do, he goes to the swimming pool where he has arranged to meet his former girlfriend, the unhappily married Marge. Before Marge arrives, though, Gavarine notices a stranger, Flo, who is near the end of her pregnancy, and he decides to approach her. She is something of a kindred spirit to Gavarine, having no concrete plan for how to raise her child. Together they go to the south of France where Flo's family lives and where she delivers her baby. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews described the book as a "wry farcical romance and coming-of-age tale" that is "altogether charming." Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Robin Harshaw observed that "Oster is a man who delights in the ambiguities of language, and I think he'd agree that My Big Apartment can be read as a … riff on resignation, in every sense of the word."

For Harshaw, what is notable about Gavarine is the profundity of his detachment from the world, the way in which he fashions a "pre-Copernican metaphysics in which the universe revolves around his very insignificance." Review of Contemporary Fiction contributor Joseph Dewey made a similar point, commenting on Oster's understanding that "romantic comedy has always lingered dangerously close to existential despair" and consequent choice to write about characters who are "tender, intellectual men who linger against adulthood, who fear accepting the chilling reality that any life is a structureless drift made endurable only by the accidental collision of two imperfect, yearning hearts." Indeed, as Harshaw pointed out, quoting the novel's translator: "Oster has said the message of his work is, ‘Let's go on living all the same.’" My Big Apartment won the Prix Médicis in 1999.

Oster's third novel to be translated into English, L'imprévu, translated as The Unforeseen: A Novel, struck many critics with its direct references to Samuel Beckett's Molloy. The plot concerns the efforts of the unnamed narrator to attend a birthday party for his friend Philippe. The narrator, who suffers from a perpetual cold that all of his girlfriends eventually catch, causing them to leave him, sets out with his lover, Laure. Immune until now, she succumbs to a cold and asks the protagonist to leave her in a hotel with their car, and attend the party on his own. This proves a daunting task: "I had not been getting much news about myself for a long time, except from Laure who had been passing news on to me up till now, keeping me informed about what I was, giving me useful indicators about how to move forward," he frets. He finally decides to hitchhike to the party and is picked up by Gilles, who invites him to attend his own birthday party that night. The narrator accepts but cannot be bothered even to tell the guests his real name. Having bored Gilles's guests, the narrator sets out toward Philippe's again, getting a ride from a woman he has just met. "I needed to feel as if something was happening," he says, "to arrange for something to happen, while not really having anything to do with it, not making any decisions, it was out of the question that I should make even the smallest decision."

Noting the many ways in which The Unforeseen parallels the work of Beckett, both thematically and in terms of plot and characterization, New York Sun critic Benjamin Lytal considered The Unforeseen a "cozy comedy and a tribute" to the great existentialist writer. Indeed, as Lytal concluded, "Oster evokes Beckett's favorite philosopher, Geulincx, who likened free will to the action of a man walking the deck of a moving boat: [the] narrator huffily straggles his way from stern to bow, trying to get a perspective on things, only to find the boat has already reached the opposite shore."

Many reviewers found depth as well as humor in the novel. Mary Whipple, writing in Mostly Fiction, saw The Unforeseen as a book exploring "the nature of selfhood and the amount of control we choose to assume, or not to assume, for the outcome of our lives." A Kirkus Reviews contributor deemed it a "lucid allegorical gem" that is "eccentric, elusive and at times explosively funny." Booklist reviewer Whitney Scott found the story of the narrator's journey "oddly mesmerizing." And a writer for Publishers Weekly observed that the novel "achieves a depth that is comic, sad and very Gallic."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Oster, Christian, My Big Apartment, translated by Jordan Stump, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2002.

Oster, Christian, The Unforeseen: A Novel, translated by Adriana Hunter, Other Press (New York, NY), 2006.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, August 1, 2007, Whitney Scott, review of The Unforeseen, p. 40.

French Review, April 1, 1998, review of Le piquenique, p. 880; October 1, 1999, Warren Motte, review of Loin d'Odile, p. 168; October 1, 2000, Warren Motte, review of Mon grand appartement, p. 180; April 1, 2002, review of Une femme de ménage, p. 1007; December 1, 2003, review of Dans le train, p. 424.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2002, review of My Big Apartment, p. 1734; January 1, 2003, review of A Cleaning Woman, p. 18; August 1, 2007, review of The Unforeseen.

New York Sun, October 17, 2007, Benjamin Lytal, "Standing in the Shadow of Giants."

New York Times Book Review, March 16, 2003, Tobin Harshaw, review of My Big Apartment.

Publishers Weekly, August 6, 2007, review of The Unforeseen, p. 169.

Review of Contemporary Fiction, March 22, 2003, Warren Motte, review of Dans le train, p. 155; June 22, 2003, Joseph Dewey, review of My Big Apartment, p. 139.

Studies in Twentieth Century Literature, January 1, 2002, "Christian Oster's Picnic," p. 209.

Times Literary Supplement, March 26, 2004, Shaun Whiteside, review of My Big Apartment, p. 30; October 12, 2007, Rima Devereaux, review of Sur la dune, p. 35.

World Literature Today, January 1, 1996, Lee Fahnestock, review of Le Pont d'Arcueil, p. 158; June 22, 1998, review of Le pique-nique, p. 580; June 22, 2000, Bettina L. Knapp, review of Mon grand appartement, p. 624; March 22, 2001, Bettina L. Knapp, review of Une femme de ménage, p. 362; June 22, 2001, review of Le pique-nique, p. 84; July 1, 2003, Ali Nematollahy, review of Dans le train.