Thierry Cohen

"Still With Me" by Thierry Cohen was written in response to a close friend of his committing suicide. Apparently this novel opened up a huge discussion of suicide in France and led to some practices being implemented in response to suicide.

"Still With Me" revolves around Jeremy, a 20 year old student who commits suicide on his 20th birthday when the girl he has loved since he was a child, Victoria, rejects his declaration of love and informs him she is engaged to someone else. Jeremy committing suicide wakes up and finds that a year has passed and it is now his 21st birthday and he is happily dating Victoria. Jeremy cannot remember the year proceeding and cannot believe that he and Victoria are not together.

Through discussions with Victoria and his best friend Pierre Jeremy we find is still selfish and solely fixated on Victoria for the cause of his own happiness.

The novel follows Jeremy from his 20th birthday til his old age still waking and finding that time has passed. I don't want to spoil the novel but when Jeremy finds out what is going on and why he is missing huge chunks of his life you will get chills. I loved how Thierry framed the story and the resolution at the end. Also seeing how Jeremy's own Judaism and religious beliefs came into play was very good and thoughtfully interwoven into the story.

I would recommend reading this but I think if anyone has known someone who has committed suicide or attempted it this subject and the way it is portrayed in this novel may be a bit too raw for you.

Please note that I received this novel for free via the Amazon Vine Program.… (more)

I started to read this book in French a while ago, unfortunately my French is just not good enough (even with a dictionary by my side).

Honestly, yes, it was a bit hard following what was going on, but it's not rocket science. Things can get lost in translation, but I think Summer Robinson did a wonderful job.
The story is pretty simple, Jeremy, turning twenty, hopelessly in love with Victoria, commits suicide on his birthday after she rejects him. Then, a couple of times over the years, he wakes up the morning of his birthdays to find that his life has moved on, he got the girl, they had a family, he lost the girl, and to his horror, he is a horrible, horrible man.

I was captivated by this story, it's brilliant, actually. The villain in this book is Jeremy himself. How do you stop someone you've never met, can't meet because you can't both be there at the same time? And the remnants of his horrible doings are all around you? That's what makes it so good, Jeremy is trying to outsmart his other self.
I did shed a tear or two during the final chapters. I don't know, it was so sad that he never got to live this life that he was obviously destined to live.

I don't know what I thought the ending would be when I started this. I'd like to think he gets to start all over again.

I sure didn't expect a religious preaching, although I saw it coming somewhere throughout the book. To each their own, I guess. I love it when authors manage to weave religion into a story without being preachy, but this is actually so preachy that I felt kind of insulted. I'm deciding whether or not just to ignore the whole religious aspect, because the rest of the story was magnificent.… (more)

This novel was written by the author after his best friend committed suicide. It begins with the (attempted? completed?) suicide, on his birthday, of a young Jeremy, who has been spurned by Victoria, the woman he loves. Instead of dying, however, Jeremy wakes on his birthday a year later to find that he and Victoria are happily in love; however, he has no memory of anything since his suicide attempt.

With each chapter, Jeremy wakes on another birthday, to find his life irrevocably altered each time. He feels more and more out of control as his life deteriorates, unable to figure out what is happening as his reprehensible, but unremembered, behavior between birthdays destroys his entire life. He struggles to understand whether he is really alive or in hell.

The novel is, of course, an exploration of the aftermath of a suicide. The tone of the novel suggests that suicide is a selfish choice that is made without thought to others. In the punitive aftermath of Jeremy’s choice, one can’t help but wonder whether the novel is the author’s way of working through some of his anger at his best friend. Which would be completely understandable, but it limits the story. Rather than exploring the multifaceted and complex issues around suicide, it feels boiled down too simply to a selfish, impulsive choice that occurs because the person doesn’t think about those around them. Of course, suicide is not that simple.

Another unfortunate result of this tone is that Jeremy comes across as a rather unsympathetic character. We get glimpses of the “real Jeremy” on his birthday as each chapter begins, and these are presented in stark contrast to the everyday Jeremy who apparently hurts everyone around him. Because Jeremy himself is terribly confused about his identity, the reader never really gets a sense of who he is, making it incredibly difficult to invest in the ultimate outcome of his story.

The surrounding characters, too, seem rather incidental and are never really developed. The writing itself is quite good, and deftly captures Jeremy’s sense of increasingly confused desperation; however, it was ultimately not enough to make me ever feel connected to the story, which ended on a rather ambiguous and unsatisfying note.… (more)