Disappointed by the empty promises of adulthood, Vincent takes the tried and tested path of refusing the future and flies off to Europe. Not knowing where he is going, he racks up the miles, his eyes and heart closed to the beauty of the world, offering through boredom and disinterest a form of passive resistance to his own emancipation. The road takes an unexpected turn in Florence when he is reborn to himself through the eyes of the beautiful Anna. In this first novel delivered in the form of almost melodic fragments, Daniel Bélanger takes a look marked by tenderness and self-mockery at the self-doubt-filled complacency of youth. Carried by a clear and stripped-down language, Hitchhiking oscillates between the vertigo of an existence whose depths we do not grasp and the banal irony of everyday life. “While young people my age dreamed of climbing the grand staircase of life on a red carpet, I rolled it out at each of my emergency exits.” With his pen anchored in a multitude of detours, Daniel Bélanger once again brilliantly outlines the contours of a soul lost in six billion other solitudes.
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