Twenty Minutes of Silence

First published in 1955, the stimulating second novel by Bessette (Lili Is Crying) to be translated into English centers on a murder, though it’s no simple whodunit. In the middle of the night, a 15-year-old boy kills his father. Twenty minutes later, a doctor is fetched. A motive is offered (“I killed to be rid of anxiety,” says the unnamed boy, before retracting this statement), and the location of the murder weapon is disputed (“The revolver was in the car. The revolver was not in the car”). In a metafictional aside, Bessette even collapses the novel’s very premise: “The characters in this story are not solid, they are falling apart. Why? Because they are fake characters. They are what dummies are to living bodies.” Ultimately, the reader feels more compelled to sink into its addled atmosphere than grasp for an increasingly elusive logical thread. Bessette sustains the mood with hypnotizing language (“There are two kinds of people: Those who accept being slapped, those who don’t”; “I am high strung. Don’t ever tickle me. I am very ticklish”). This slippery and satisfying novel probes the unresolvable mysteries of life. (June)