This slippery narrative recounts the meeting between an excessive writer and Eva Ionesco, a former Lolita who saw fame in the 1970s as an adolescent when she posed nude in front of her mother’s camera. Their relationship, which hangs on a string, could have been boring and wrought with clichés, but it come through as incandescent, violent, and beautiful. Eva is a fascinating character, and Simon Liberati’s meteoric writing brilliantly pays homage to her.
When he was a child, François-Xavier always kept a book in the pocket of his jeans. However, for the first decade of his working life, he put his love of books aside to embark on a successful career in human resources. At age 34, deciding that life was too short not enjoy every moment of it, François-Xavier quit his position, moved to Toulouse, and opened his own bookstore. Six years later, while L'Autre Rive was thriving in the Pink city, François-Xavier heard that the French Embassy was looking for someone to run a future bookshop, and he moved to New York in August of 2013. The fine selection of books on display at Albertine is a reflection of his hard work.
