Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance's Reviews > The Martins

A writer in Paris is struggling to come up with his next novel idea when he decides to make the next person he sees on the street become the subject of his book. He's secretly hoping it will be the young woman he often sees near his apartment, but instead, it's Madeleine, an eighty-year-old woman who becomes the focus of his book.

He gradually enlarges his story to include Madeleine's daughter and her family, the Martins, and the book takes off, as the writer interviews the daughter, the daughter's husband, and the daughter's two teenage children, and the issues and adventures and pasts of all of these push the story along.

It's meta-fiction at its best, with the author (reluctantly) inserting himself into the story along with his own issues and adventures and past, and with the story sweeping forward to include the boyfriend of Madeleine's granddaughter and Madeleine's ex and...well, just about anyone the author can think of to include.

So much fun. With surprising insight into human beings, too.