{"id":311997,"date":"2025-10-17T23:56:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T23:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/311997\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T23:56:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T23:56:14","slug":"why-monas-eyes-author-is-only-pretending-to-be-ok-with-this-readers-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/311997\/","title":{"rendered":"Why \u2018Mona\u2019s Eyes\u2019 author is only pretending to be OK with this, readers \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas Schlesser is the author of \u201cMona\u2019s Eyes,\u201d which was a No. 1 bestseller in France and has been translated into 37 languages, including Braille. The director of the Hartung-Bergman Foundation in France, he teaches art history at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. Schlesser will appear at Vroman\u2019s in Pasadena on Oct. 27<\/a> to speak and sign the book.<\/p>\n

Q. Please tell our readers about your new book.<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cMona\u2019s Eyes\u201d tells the story of a ten-year-old girl who spends 52 weeks visiting the great museums of Paris \u2014 the Louvre, the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay, and the Centre Pompidou \u2014 guided by her grandfather. Each week, she discovers a single masterpiece and, through it, a way of understanding life: generosity, doubt, courage, melancholy, revolt, and many others. The book is built around this idea that art can teach us to live, not merely to know. It is at once a novel of transmission, a meditation on beauty, and a reflection on what it means to see.<\/p>\n

One of the central aspects of \u201cMona\u2019s Eyes\u201d is its inclusive dimension. The book was conceived so that people with low or no vision could experience it fully. Its descriptions of artworks are written to be \u201cheard\u201d and imagined, and the novel exists in Braille and audio versions. It was important to me that the story be accessible to everyone \u2014 because vision, in the deepest sense, is not just a matter of the eyes, but of the soul.<\/p>\n

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Sign up for our free newsletter about books, authors, reading and more<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Q. Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?<\/b><\/p>\n

Maybe \u201cThe Lion\u201d by Joseph Kessel. I read it when I was the same age as Mona in my novel \u2014 ten years old. I think I had enjoyed it without fully understanding why: the friendship between the girl and the lion, the landscapes of Kenya, that mixture of beauty and danger. But what has stayed with me ever since is the final line:\u00a0\u201cAnd the beasts were dancing.\u201d\u00a0It struck me as a very concrete, almost physical metaphor \u2014 something you can see, feel, and believe in. And for some reason, it has followed me all my life.<\/p>\n

Q. Is there a type of book you\u2019re hesitant to read?<\/b><\/p>\n

Philosophy. I\u2019ve never had the mind for it \u2014 I think it requires a very particular kind of intelligence. But I must admit I\u2019m also dismayed by the amount of jargon that so often surrounds it, a kind of delirious fog that stands between the reader and the idea. If I\u2019m going to read something obscure, I\u2019d rather it be the beautiful obscurity of poetry \u2014 at least madness there has music.<\/p>\n

Q. Do you have any favorite book covers?<\/b><\/p>\n

Absolutely \u2014 I\u2019ve always been drawn to science-fiction covers, especially those that feel almost hyperreal, uncanny. I remember being deeply impressed by covers using works by Zdzis\u0142aw Beksi\u0144ski, whose art is dark, haunting, surreal \u2014 as though you\u2019re peering into another realm through flesh and shadow. Of course, I wouldn\u2019t call them untouchable masterpieces, but they possess an extraordinary imaginative force \u2014 a power to create entire worlds from a single image.<\/p>\n

Q. Are you the kind of reader who finishes every book you start, or do you allow yourself to stop when a book doesn\u2019t speak to you?<\/b><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a problem to dip in and out of books. I like the idea that reading is a form of poaching \u2014 unpredictable, fragmentary, instinctive. I\u2019ve always loved the freedom to move between pages, to catch sparks rather than follow maps. That said, I also recognize that some books demand to be felt and understood in their entirety \u2014 they form a world, a system. And I\u2019ll admit something: it slightly irritates me when people tell me they\u2019ve read \u201cMona\u2019s Eyes\u201d out of order, even if I pretend publicly that I don\u2019t mind.<\/p>\n

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Backlisted: A beginner\u2019s guide to the best of the books podcast<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Q. Do you have a favorite bookstore or bookstore experience?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes \u2014 I remember visiting a small bookstore in Los Angeles in 2007, called Wacko<\/a>. It was unlike anything I\u2019d seen before: half art gallery, half cabinet of curiosities. On one of the tables, I found an English translation of a book by my friend Philippe Di Folco about tattoos. Seeing his work there, so far from home, made me dream. So today, finding \u201cMona\u2019s Eyes\u201d in American bookstores feels both moving and a little unreal.<\/p>\n

Q. What\u2019s something about your book that no one knows?<\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure no one knows it, but the final part of \u201cMona\u2019s Eyes\u201d is built around artworks increasingly marked by darkness \u2014 as if the book itself were gradually embracing the risk of blindness that grows within the story. There are many small hidden details like that throughout the novel, subtle echoes between the paintings and Mona\u2019s inner journey, that most readers don\u2019t necessarily notice at first.<\/p>\n

Q. If you could ask your readers something, what would it be?<\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a polite person, so my question is always the same:\u00a0How are you?\u00a0It sounds simple, but it\u2019s not. There\u2019s a story I love about Milan Kundera \u2014 when someone asked him that automatic question, he paused and said: \u201cThat\u2019s an important question. I\u2019ll think about it. When I find the answer, I\u2019ll tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thomas Schlesser is the author of \u201cMona\u2019s Eyes,\u201d which was a No. 1 bestseller in France and has…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":311998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,1071,1072,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-311997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-the-book-pages","11":"tag-things-to-do","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115392216109695963","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}