Perfecting the Shot — an immersive view of the act of killing

{"text":[[{"start":6.95,"text":"Whenever he feels fragile, the teenage narrator of Mathias Énard’s Perfecting the Shot yearns for his rooftop, his rifle and the movement of seagulls in the dawn sky. At dawn, he finds that the light is perfect — not too blinding, no reflections — and people are less careful. In one scene, he is soothed by the sight of a woman falling “like a marionette with its strings cut” when his bullet hits her. Shooting is “so simple, control of the breath, the result of the shot, certainties, sure things”."}],[{"start":40.7,"text":"War and conflict are a common thread in the oeuvre of Énard, the French novelist who won the Prix Goncourt for 2015’s Compass. His earlier work Zone, an amphetamine-fuelled stream of consciousness written as a single sentence, traced the violent, entangled histories of the Mediterranean."}],[{"start":59.35,"text":"Perfecting the Shot, though newly translated into English, is actually Énard’s debut novel, originally published in 2003. It’s the latest in a series of his books to be translated into English by Charlotte Mandell; her translation of Compass was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, and the most recent English publication, The Deserters (2025), was longlisted. "}],[{"start":83.25,"text":"Perfecting the Shot is set in a nameless city during an unidentified civil war. In the early days, “you could see weapons sprouting like leaves in springtime but you didn’t imagine the definitive transformation that was about to occur.” Before long, the protagonist discovers a talent for killing people. While he believes that his work as a sniper is useful for demoralising the “enemy”, he also shoots for his own gratification, drawing solace from the simplicity of the “art form”."}],[{"start":114.1,"text":"The protagonist’s mother — both characters are unnamed — begins to lose her mind, walking on to their balcony naked, refusing to wash for fear of water and obsessively tracing the patterns of tiles for hours at a time. To care for her, he employs 15-year-old Myrna, whose father has been killed by a shell. He begins to watch her, “motionless as a guardian angel”, as she sleeps. Before long, he is dreaming of raping her and of killing her when she resists."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":142.9,"text":"This kaleidoscope of desires — sexual, violent — makes him feverish. “Cold, liquid stars streamed down my back . . . I wanted to fill my senses with detonations, volleys, I wanted my wrist to leap like an eel to the to-and-fro rhythm of the breech, I wanted my eyes to see one last time the magic of the projectile, the brief unreal sincere flame.” It is to Mandell’s credit that her translation keeps pace with the breathlessness of Énard’s writhing prose."}],[{"start":173.05,"text":"Myrna vanishes, having fled back to her village, and the war moves to the mountains. There are graphic descriptions of civilian rape and eviscerated corpses; a man lies in a “bloody heap on a stretcher, like a crushed toad”. Yet Énard also has a tendency towards the poetic, and never more so than when his protagonist is hiding amid the mint and eucalyptus in the valleys. Jeeps speed off “in a cloud of dust . . . like circus horses”; later, with the sun “dissolving the scent of thyme . . . the perfume of hot rock and dry grass was becoming intoxicating”."}],[{"start":208.95000000000002,"text":"In his more lucid moments, the sniper reflects on the senselessness of it all — skirmishes are just a way to pass the time, “like doing homework on holiday” — and on the aching tedium of war. At this point, the prose also becomes weighed down by painstaking details about rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and shell calibre. Eventually, though, the sniper is (literally) out of the woods and once again on the hunt for Myrna."}],[{"start":236.25000000000003,"text":"Perfecting the Shot is at its best when delving into the psyche of its young protagonist — with all its disturbing contradictions, of startling tenderness and cold vengeance. The complete immersion in that psyche verges on the claustrophobic, but therein lies the power of the narrative. "}],[{"start":253.20000000000002,"text":"As it builds to its cathartic conclusion, “I feel the breath of violence pushing me towards the abyss,” reflects the protagonist, “like a boat to the edge of the world, and I can’t regret anything or feel anything, I will go to the end, I will do what I have to do.”"}],[{"start":270.75,"text":"Perfecting the Shot by Mathias Énard, translated by Charlotte Mandell Fitzcarraldo £12.99/New Directions $17.95, 172 pages"}],[{"start":282.15,"text":"Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café and follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X"}],[{"start":297.05,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1790948994_5099.mp3"}