Our Reading Journey

In the Fall of 2025, we explored the story of an unnamed narrator who decides to move his life—and his library—into his bathtub. The plot follows his immobile travel from this Parisian sanctuary to a hotel in Venice and back again, accompanied by his patient girlfriend and a pair of unfinished Polish painters. It is a deceptively simple narrative where the protagonist’s refusal to leave his porcelain retreat becomes the central event of the book.

Our analysis framed this retreat as a profound act of passive resistance, a post-modern "Bartleby" move for the late 20th century. We read the bathroom as a symbol of the 1980s European désillusionnement, marking the end of the grand collective utopias of the previous decades. By withdrawing into the private sphere, the narrator stages a quiet rebellion against a world obsessed with meaningless motion. We concluded that Toussaint’s minimalist, clinical prose perfectly captures this "end of ideals," where the only remaining territory worth defending is the few square meters of one's own bathroom.

About the Author

Jean-Philippe Toussaint (b. 1957) is a titan of the Éditions de Minuit, the legendary publishing house that championed the Nouveau Roman. A writer, filmmaker, and photographer, Toussaint is celebrated for his "flat" or impassive style—a way of writing that avoids emotional overstatement in favor of a playful, almost mathematical observation of reality. Since the cult success of La Salle de bain, he has continued to win major accolades, including the Prix Médicis for Fuir (2005), cementing his role as the master of the infra-ordinary.