spuytenduyvil

Insouciance charts a few months in the life of a man having an affair with his partner’s daughter from a previous marriage.  Its span of time is populated by large and small events in various configurations of characters, culminating with inevitable, but not entirely condemnable, loss.  The novel draws most of its tension, beauty, and humor from the title in so far as it examines the potential friction between the term’s various shades of meaning – to be carefree, without worry, cheerful, as contrasted, of course, with a state of indifference. Insouciance displays Phillips’s talent for embodying a unique, minimalist style in his approach to the convergence of everyday phenomena and their fictional, often comical designs.