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The Carousel of Desire was named of of Foreword Reviews' 14 Favorites of 2016!

— Foreword Reviews, Dec 20 2016

"The prolific French Belgian dramatist, fiction writer, and film director inventively interweaves the love lives of its inhabitants into a kaleidoscopic and cinematic tale."

— Booklist, Oct 6 2016

"The human dramas in Carousel reward the voyeur’s eye...This monumental novel is satisfying at all turns."

— ForeWord Reviews, Aug 3 2016

The bonds that link the characters in these winning stories aren’t just “invisible,” as the book’s title suggests, but unconventional as well. There’s the gay couple in “Two Gentlemen From Brussels” who become entangled in the lives of two strangers after secretly...

— Jan 5 2015

This newest collection of short stories from Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt examines the facets of love through a variety of short tales. From a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps who finds inner peace in the love of a faithful dog to a mother who rediscovers love for her child...

— Jul 15 2014

Throughout the admirably sentimental short stories of France's Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, the keyword is amour. Schmitt's beaus and belles adore kidnapped children, unrequited lovers, and loyal hounds, in stories which touch the heart and rouse the spirit.

— Jul 8 2014

“What a delight when a writer hits his target as deftly and with such beauty as Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt does in Invisible Love.” What a delight when a writer hits his target as deftly and with such beauty as Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt does in Invisible Love. His...

— Jul 1 2014

Schmitt (Concerto to the Memory of an Angel, 2011, etc.) writes movingly about three women, divided by time and distance, whose lives connect when they attempt to break free of expectations imposed by society. Displaying empathy for women and the constraints they face simply...

— Sep 17 2013

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— Sep 27 2010

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— Sep 23 2010

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— Sep 5 2010

The title of Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s forthcoming story collection, The Woman with the Bouquet, sounds like it might refer to a painting, and there is a quality to Mr.Schmitt’s writing that takes one back to a time when photography had yet to make the painted portrait obsolete.

— Jul 27 2010

Schmitt's mostly pleasant collection of five stories (after The Most Beautiful Book in the World) observes uncommon relationships, from the intense to the fleeting, beginning with "The Dreamer from Ostend," in which the narrator, recovering from a breakup, lodges with the aging,...

— Jul 19 2010

Although labeled “novellas” in the subtitle, these eight pieces are true short stories; each one contains only a few key characters and spans roughly twenty pages. In the broadest sense, these stories uncover the hidden sources of humanity’s best qualities: happiness,...

— May 5 2010

In the longest of the eight novellas in The Most Beautiful Book in the World, a shop assistant from a small town finally meets her hero, a novelist from Paris, and fluffs her lines. Her silly name,"Odette Toulemonde". which is also the title of the story, comes out as "Dette",...

— Dec 18 2009

The Most Beautiful Book in the World is a collection of eight modern fairy tales. In each of the novellas, a sense of the fantastic intertwines with the mundane, sometimes enchantingly, sometimes crudely but still beguilingly. The title story, for instance, transports the...

— Nov 2 2009

There is a surprising sweetness to these stories of redemption and reconciliation. They carry a slight pleasant aftertaste, a lingering hint of delight. The central characters, all women, get more than they deserve or ironically get more than they understand, often by giving...

— Aug 27 2009

from Words Without Borders Contemporary French literature outclasses all other nationalities when it comes to melding the popular and the profound, as epitomized by Annie Ernaux's addictively cerebral TMI or Amélie Nothomb's highbrow whimsy. Now Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt—a...

— Aug 25 2009

Eight well-developed, engaging stories by French novelist Schmitt (My Life with Mozart) delineate the complex emotional lives of women and their nettlesome men. Two of the tales play into the delicious stereotype of married Frenchmen carrying on parallel lives with longstanding...

— Jun 24 2009

Eight stories about a variety of women from French playwright/novelist Schmitt. Several start with intriguing puzzles. Who is the old woman repeatedly breaking into Odile's Paris apartment? (The answer in "The Intruder" sheds an imaginative light on sickness.) What...

— Jun 15 2009