The Moustache
- Author: Emmanuel Carrère
- Page count: 192
- Started on: 2026/09/02
- Finished on: 2026/09/05
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
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The Moustache is a story about a man who shaves his moustache on a whim one morning, only to have his wife, colleagues and friends insist that he’s never had a moustache. What begins as a small joke ends up with the man spiraling out of control. Remembered trips that apparently never happened, friends that apparently never existed, etc.
The book explores how having one’s own memories denied by others may affect a person’s sanity. In itself this is an interesting concept, and in places the story is a real page-turner. But in other places I found the writing boring and repetitive, like the protagonist repeatedly obsessing over how others might be plotting against him. This could still have been a 3-star read for me, except for the last two pages, where the book suddenly takes a turn that left a bad taste in my mouth.
