LECASBLE, Guillaume 1954-

PERSONAL:

Born 1954.

CAREER:

Artist, filmmaker, and writer.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Lobster, Seuil (Paris, France), 2003.

Cut, Seuil (Paris, France), 2004.

Author of a series of children's books.

SIDELIGHTS:

Guillaume Lecasble did his first artistic work in the field of painting. Though he later took up filmmaking and writing, painting has continued to inform his other artistic ventures. Some of Lecasble's short films features a pair of characters called bonhomme and bonfemme; they were subsequently incorporated into a series of children's books. Lecasble's first novel, Lobster, is a fantastic story of Angelina, a passenger on the doomed steamship Titanic, and Lobster, a lobster who was about to be cooked for dinner when the ship began to sink. Angelina and Lobster briefly become lovers before they are separated, but they resolve to find each other again. Before they do, many other strange scenes unfold. According to Ray Olson in Booklist, it is a tribute to Lecasble's power as a writer that this "ludicrous and macabre" narrative "sweeps impossibility, and the reader's possible disgust, before it." Lobster is an expression of "wild, sometimes horrific expressions of imaginative energy and anthropomorphic fantasy," stated a contributor to Kirkus Reviews, who went on to warn that the story is "not for the squeamish." Other commentators also found the book powerful, funny, and shocking. Guardian reviewer Nicholas Lezard wrote that while the book makes one laugh, it is "a kind of appalled laughter, a salute to outrageousness, the daring of what is unfolding before you." The reviewer for Publishers Weekly summarized that Lobster is "both tender and appalling."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 2006, Ray Olson, review of Lobster, p. 73.

Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2005, review of Lobster, p. 1160.

Publishers Weekly, October 10, 2005, review of Lobster, p. 33.

ONLINE

Guardian Online,http://books.guardian.co.uk/ (July 9, 2005), Nicholas Lezard, review of Lobster. *