Tous les noms

French language

Published 2001

ISBN:
978-2-02-048493-0
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3 stars (1 review)

2 editions

Review of 'All the Names' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Senhor Jose is employed as a low-level clerk in the bureaucratic Central Registry. By chance, he undertakes a quest: to track down information about a woman whose name he learns by accident.

His world is small (he is "convinced that the rest of the world follows the same deductive path as he does"), and he ventures further and further afield in search of information about the mystery woman. Senhor Jose has difficulties with personal relationships, and is not particularly intent on actually meeting the woman of his quest. He'd rather know about her than know her.

(Spoiler warning: Skip this paragraph if you don't want to learn a key plot point. Senhor Jose's inquiries may have precipitated the woman's suicide, yet he never confronts this possibility.)

To Senhor Jose, a life's value is proven if it is documented. He says, "Anyway, the fact stands recorded," as if recordation is evidence …