And My See-Through Heart, By Véronique Ovaldé

How little we know of our lovers

Lancelot is more of a meek modern man than a valiant knight of old. Most of his existence is marked by the passive acceptance of whatever life throws at him.

One fine morning, that includes an elegant spike-heeled shoe flung down from an apartment window, which cuts his scalp. The apartment belongs to Irina, who has "unusual eyes, olive skin and black hair that coiled and swung as if it had a life of its own". Lancelot leaves his wife for Irina, an act of self-assertion resoundingly out of character.

Irina is often away overseas, but Lancelot is happy to occupy himself by keeping house. This cosy idyll ends abruptly when she dies in a car accident. Before long Lancelot has more to deal with than his bereavement. The police investigate Irina's death and it emerges she had strong links to an extreme animal-rights group. It becomes clear how little he really knew about her.

French novelist Véronique Ovaldé has a distinctive approach to story-telling. Lancelot is a captivating character, despite posing a series of conundrums. His universe has surreal elements: items of furniture inexplicably vanish. His membership of his designated gender is not whole-hearted. His mother told him that a man takes a mistress to stay with his wife, while a wife takes a lover to leave her husband – and he knows his elopement with Irina means he inhabits the female part of this equation. Irina herself is something of an alter ego; "If I had been a woman I would have liked to have been like her."

Ovaldé's play with magical realism and Lancelot's diffuse personality neither impedes her main narrative nor undermines its momentum. At the heart of this novel (translated by Adriana Hunter) lies a tension between tragedy and absurdity. There are echoes of Kurt Vonnegut and Milan Kundera in Ovaldé's ability to take the most stressful events – death, depression and anxiety – and bring an obliquely discursive perspective to bear. The result is luminously engaging and delicately, comically uplifting.