My Wish List

January 27, 2014
The melancholy protagonist of Delacourt’s novel, the first by this French author to be published in English, has the chance to answer a perennial hypothetical question, “What would you do if you won the lottery?” Jocelyne, a 47-year-old shop owner, knitting blogger, and empty nester in Arras, France, wrestles with how to spend her €18.5 million jackpot. “I think of myself, of all that will now be possible for me, and I don’t want any of it,” Jocelyne laments. She hides her lottery check in her shoe, and keeps the news of it from her husband, Jocelyn (oddly, the two have nearly identical names); their grown-up daughter, Nadine; and their son, Romain, confessing only to her stroke-afflicted father, who quickly forgets what Jocelyne has told him. While she compiles her touchingly ordinary wish lists, Jocelyne’s business booms, her blog readers multiply, and her morose husband—who was previously cruel and distant because of a still birth in their past—grows tender. This dark fable about how money changes everything, and nothing, was a bestseller in France, and the aching need for comfort, safety and love that it describes is universal, even if Jocelyne’s ambivalence toward big money may puzzle American readers. Agent: Jessica Purdue, Orion.

February 1, 2014
Money can't buy happiness for an introspective housewife who wins the lottery. This is the first novel to appear in English by French author Delacourt, who was recently in the news after being sued by actress Scarlett Johansson for using her image in another novel. The Wish List details the inner life of Jocelyne, a 47-year-old wife in a small French town. Her family includes a stillborn baby, two grown children, and her husband, curiously named Jocelyn, a middle manager at a Haagen-Daz factory who drinks too much beer and dreams of luxuries like a flat-screen television. Jocelyne also has her own career, running a fabric shop and composing a very successful blog about sewing and knitting. She claims happiness, with her simple descriptions of everyday pleasures, only exposing her fears to her stroke-addled father. Everything comes tumbling down when, at the urging of two younger friends, Jocelyne buys a lottery ticket and wins over 18 million, a fact that she keeps secret from everyone, hiding the check in a wardrobe. "It's only in books that you can change your life," she advises. "Wipe out everything at a stroke. Do away with the weight of things. Delete the nasty parts, and then at the end of a sentence find yourself on the far side of the world." At the heart of Jocelyne's anxiety over her new fortune is a kind of quiet hysteria, steeped in the fear that if she gives her husband the objects that he covets, he will no longer want her. As Jocelyne's secret is finally uncovered, this domestic novel reveals itself as one the late novelist Josephine Hart might have written. A best-seller in its original language, this dastardly little novel focuses on love, desire and what we stand to lose when we win.

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March 15, 2014

Madame Jocelyn Guerbette is middle aged, stuck in a boring life, with a few friends, a business she likes, and a husband who's just okay. When her lottery ticket hits the big jackpot of 18 million Euro, the psychologist "with Daisy Duck lips" warns Jocelyn about the perils of sudden wealth. Before cashing in her winning ticket, Jocelyn makes lists of her desires, which fluctuate with her moods. Brief, vignette chapters entice the reader to persist, pursuing questions for potential book club discussion that are universally applicable: What is happiness, what can money buy, what happens to love? VERDICT Already a best seller in France with rights sold in 30 countries, this slim novel by a prize-winning French author will attract U.S. readers, especially those who enjoyed Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, because it addresses the question of suddenly coming into big money and does it in a sparse, understated, philosophical manner that is wholly French. Overall this translates into appeal to male as well as female readers, and for literary fiction fans and book clubs.--Mary K. Bird-Guilliams, Chicago

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 15, 2014
At 47, Jocelyn Guerbette is fairly sure nothing in her life is going to get remarkably better. Owning a fabric shop is stable if unexciting work, her grown children only fill her in on the barest details of their lives, and her husband seems to desire nothing more than a flat-screen TV and every James Bond DVD ever produced. Still, small glimmers of happiness, like catching up on small-town gossip with the twins who work at the hair salon next door, make Jocelyn content. When Franoise and Dani'le convinceher to buy a lottery ticket, Jocelyn never expects her spur-of-the-moment purchase to pay off. But pay off it does, and Jocelyn quietly exchanges her winning ticket for a terrifyingly large check. While she decides how to tell her friends and family about her winnings, Jocelyn realizes just how life-changing her new fortune could be. My Wish List is about one woman's one-in-a-million response to a one-in-a-million chance. Jocelyn is an immensely likable narrator, and Delacourt's fluid, elegant prose brings layers of depth to a relatively simple story. Fans of Chocolat (1999) and The Elegance of the Hedgehog (2008) will adore My Wish List, an emotionally wrenching yet ultimately uplifting story of ambition, risk, and acceptance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)