Fait divers (encore)

I wrote admiringly here not long ago about the spare elegance of a recently published collection of short French newspaper fillers called "fait divers" – sundry items.

Here is another, longer piece from the NYRB discussing these gems and their author, whom the reviewer credits with "considerable talents for compression, distillation, and skeletal evocation..."

One more sample:

There was a gas explosion at the home of Larrieux, in Bordeaux. He was injured. His mother-in-law's hair caught on fire. The ceiling caved in.