Hunting And Gathering Analysis

Camille Fauque was a ghost who worked at night and piled up stones by day. A ghost who moved slowly, spoke little, and with a graceful shimmy made herself scarce. (19)

In the international bestseller Hunting and Gathering, French Novelist Anna Gavalda (born on December 9th, 1970), dubbed as one of France’s biggest literary stars, returns with a print gateway to all things french and human in her third novel. It was first published as Ensemble, C’est Tout (2004), and was later translated from French by Alison Anderson in 2007. Moreover, it was made into a french-film of the same name that was directed by Claude Berri that same year.

Written in third-person, Hunting and Gathering tells the story of four, flawed individuals whose strings of fate entangle with one another against the backdrop of modern-day Paris (Winter, 2003). The narrator eases mature-readers in all of the characters’ shoes, spanning across over a hundred chapters which are sectioned into five parts and an epilogue. She surrenders their personal thoughts, intimate moments and five senses to the smallest detail.

The family of no-hopers had now acquired a grandmother, and even if their little tribe was incomplete and always would be, they had no intention of allowing this to get them down. (323)

The novel opens with Paulette Lestafier, 83, found

The novel is a prime example of a successful character-driven novel told with a show-don 't-tell approach; whether or not it was on purpose, Hunting and Gathering portrays how people in reality encounter and deal with life’s battles, making readers relate and empathise with the