Lead Review
- Book: A Life Without End
- Location: World
- Author: Frédéric Beigbeder
A Life Without End is not an easy book to classify. I describe it above as ‘a fictional search for immortality’ – but that is only true in part. The book is semi-autobiographical… Frédéric is, in real life as in the book, a French TV presenter. But the show he presents in the book is way over the top – he, as the chat show host, and his guests have to ingest a blind pill before each show – some are uppers, some are downers, and some are hallucinatory. The show records the outrageous interactions between them. Not, I suspect, true.
Anyway, Frédéric – just passing 50 – decides that he does not wish to die… ever. He determines to spend as long as it takes to discover the secret of immortality. He sets out on a world quest with his 10 year old daughter. The people he meets are people he has met in real life. The research he does and the solutions he proposes are all based on fact – if a tad exaggerated. The book is in many ways a treatise on cutting edge state of the art ideas on prolonging life expectancy. But it is disguised as fiction and humour. You never quite know when fact becomes fiction… when to laugh and when to wonder. Frédéric is based in Paris, but he travels far and wide in his research. He starts at the Geneva Institute of Genetics and Genomics, progresses though a trip to Jerusalem to find out about stem cell transplants from a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and on to a blood cleansing and rejuvenation clinic in the Austrian alps, before ending up at a cell and blood transplant facility in California. Your blood is exchanged for healthy young blood – and you live for ever.
Frédéric, of course, has not had the final treatment in real life. But I guess he visited the clinic and thought about it.
A Life Without End is a strange book, but has been well received by the critics. Le Figaro says ‘It’s funny, profound, brilliantly researched, and fiendishly artful’. The Financial Times says ‘Powerful – the combination of banality and panic is quietly devastating. Affecting and disconcerting’. I’m not so sure – I enjoyed it ‘up to a point’, but I guess it wasn’t really for me.
But don’t let me put you off!
Please wait...
