A Slight Case of Fatigue

When his son Maxime, embarrassed by his father's dilapidated house, his garden gone to seed and his old beater of a car, decides to leave home and live with his cool professional mother--who immediately demands twice the alimony--Eddy goes on a rampage, smashing his son's furniture and hurtling it through windows he neglects to open first. Ending up in the hospital, the doctor diagnoses "a slight case of fatigue."

Written like a surrealist Camus on steroids, in multiple voices, with an uncanny eye and ear for graphic physicality and keen psychological insight, Bourguignon's examination of relationships between men and women, fathers and sons, past wounds and present possibilities is filled with raucous warmth and humanity. It is also intensely, darkly, and unbearably funny.