Olivier Ciechelski ‘Fire in the Valley’

If it was legal and accepted to take the life of a living being in the context of hunting, to kill a domestic animal is considered a crime – he was pretty sure. And as for intentionally starting a fire, that was beyond comprehension : how did these hillbillies become arsonists?***

My third book read this year for the Readers Prize at the Quai du Polar in Lyon finished a while back but over which I have dillydallied before writing this post; Olivier Ciechelski tells the story of an outsider keeping a low profile not to create waves until he needs to defend what is his.

Stan, retired from the military after a number of missions in war zones has bought a plot of land and a run down house in the hills in central France, meaning to keep himself to himself, but the world has other plans for him. a group of local hunters open a trail across his land marking it with paint without asking him, when he confronts them he is told that they have always hunted here and thus don’t need to ask permission.

Stan rents out a winter area for sheep on his land to a local sheep farmer, Pradal, and discovers a young woman, Mathilda preparing to take the sheep up to the high pastures for summer and felt a little guilty about the caravan she would use during the preparation:

Before leaving, Pradal showed her the caravan. It smelt of fags, boiled cabbage and damp hair; black mold was dotted all over the walls. Stan watched Mathilda for her reaction but she didn’t let anything show. he showed her the cold water tap which would be her only access to water and was a little ashamed.***

Things begin to go wrong when, after moving the markings on the trail one of the hunters falls and breaks a leg, the group the enters into his home without knocking to threaten him and incidentally see Mathilda’s wet clothes drying, jumping to false conclusions.

Firstly the hunters kill a boar which had been coming to Stan’s back door for food, this upsets him considerably and he thinks it over:

He wasn’t welcome here. He had thought to live there without playing the game of belonging to the community. But the community wouldn’t accept that and he would never again be able to live in peace. The violence had found him, he had taken to it like an old confortable piece of clothing. It had come back to him like a gesture repeated thousands of times such as the handle of a door we open in the dark, like a tool knows out hand, like our hand knows the weapon which occasionally ahead of the mouvement reaches out for our hand.***

They then come back for him, armed, and he takes to the hills. As alluded to in the opening quote the hunters then burn down his house and follow him. After returning to ensure that they leave Mathilda alone, a good job he does, and shooting and injuring one of them he takes to the high ground where his army training would enable him to survive for a considerable time, but where he is alone with his thoughts.

A study of a man on the margins of society and his struggles with his own mind. A reasonable story but not my winner.

First published in French by Éditions du Rouergue in 2023 as ‘Feux dans la plaine’

*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

S’il était légal et admis de supprimer un être vivant dans le cadre de la chasse, tuer un animal domestique était considéré comme un crime – il en était presque sûr. Quant à l’incendie volontaire, ça dépassait l’entendement : comment ces petits-bourgeois des collines étaient-ils devenus des incendiaires ?

Avant de prendre congé, Pradal lui montra la caravane. L’endroit puait la clope, le chou rance et le poil mouillé ; des moisissures noires constellaient les parois. Stan guetta la réaction de Mathilde mais elle ne laissa rien paraître. Il lui montra le robinet d’eau froide qui serait son seul point d’eau et eut un peu honte.

Il n’était pas le bienvenu ici. Il avait cru pouvoir vivre là sans jouer le jeu de la communauté humaine. Mais la communauté humaine ne voulait pas cela et il ne serait plus jamais en paix. La violence l’avait retrouvé, il l’avait endossée comme un vieux vêtement confortable. Elle était revenue comme un geste qu’on a fait mille fois, comme la poignée de porte qu’on trouve dans le noir, comme l’outil connaît la main, comme la main connaît l’arme, l’arme qui parfois devance le geste et cherche la main.

Morgan Audic « Nobody Dies at Longyearbyen »

They could be anywhere or hidden in the snow, without you ever realising. Even a few hundred metres away from you. A patient predator with which humans must share the top of the food chain.***

My second book read this year for the Readers Prize at the Quai du Polar in Lyon. I had, so far, never read anything by Audic, never heard of him to be honest but this is a well researched tale. Set in Svalbard, Longyearbyen is the northern most town with a local population. This is bear country and the bears are protected so the humans must live on the same island as these predators, as illustrated above.

There are two seemingly distinct mysteries pursued here, firstly the death of a researcher investigated by Lottie Sandvik, an investigator from Oslo who now lives in Longyearbyen. Agneta Sørensen was found dead on a beach next to a sperm whale with obvious marks of a bear attack on her body and Lottie with her colleague Thor visit the scene, where Lottie finds a bullet in the whale, later found to be from a WW2 era rifle:

We think that she was carrying out a sort of autopsy when the bear caught her by surprise explained Thor.
—A necropsy, she corrected. An autopsy is for humans.
—Oh the lady knows her vocabulary. That would explain why Jørn entrusted you with the enquiery. Lottie ignored his dig.
— So your hypothesis is that she came out here alone to extract her samples? That’s reckless.
Thor shrugged his shoulders. And what’s more I kept the best for the end: she didn’t have a rifle.
— What! ***

Lottie visits the university and meets with Agneta’s supervisor, a seemingly obnoxious person who she sees making it very clear to a group of researchers that they should never go anywhere without a rifle.

We then discover something of the international status of Svalbard recognised as a part of Norway but with mineral rights shared by a number of countries with Russia being the only country that had ever used these rights and that there is a run down Russian mining town nearby.

A second mystery, seemingly not linked to the first concerns the apparent suicide of Asa Hagen an environmentalist who runs a business taking people out to sea to meet the whales. It then appears that in a previous life before moving to Svalbard, she had been a war reporter and her previous reporting partner, Nils Maden doesn’t believe the suicide explanation and begins digging around until eventually a link between the two cases becomes apparent.

A book I would recommend.

First Published in French as Personne ne meurt à Longyearbyen by Albin Michel in 2023.

*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

Ils pouvaient être n’importe où, invisibles, tapis dans la neige, sans que vous n’en ayez jamais conscience. Même à quelques centaines de mètres de vous. Un prédateur patient, avec lequel les humains devaient partager le sommet de la pyramide alimentaire.

On pense qu’elle était en train de faire un genre d’autopsie quand l’ours l’a surprise, expliqua Thor. – Une nécropsie, corrigea-t-elle. L’autopsie c’est pour les humains. – Madame a du vocabulaire. Je comprends mieux pourquoi Jørn t’a confié l’enquête. Lottie ignora la pique. – Donc ton hypothèse, c’est qu’elle serait venue toute seule ici pour faire des prélèvements ? C’est de l’inconscience. Thor haussa les épaules. – Et encore, je t’ai gardé le meilleur pour la fin : elle n’avait pas de fusil. – Quoi

Il régnait une atmosphère particulière à Pyramiden. Les chaînes des balançoires grinçaient légèrement, bercées par le vent. Des renards polaires chahutaient dans les allées. La neige faisait une chapka à la tête du buste de Lénine. Tout était trop calme, trop propre, comme si la ville retenait son souffle en attendant le retour de ses habitants. La ville fantôme était une anomalie liée au statut particulier du Svalbard. Pendant longtemps, l’archipel avait été terra nullius, un territoire qui n’appartenait à personne, jusqu’à ce qu’un traité international signé au lendemain de la Première Guerre mondiale accorde à la Norvège la souveraineté sur l’île. Il stipulait que tous les pays signataires pouvaient tirer profit de ses ressources. Seule la Russie avait utilisé cette clause pour exploiter deux gisements de charbon, l’un à Barentsburg, à une trentaine de kilomètres à l’ouest de Longyearbyen, l’autre ici.

Marin Ledun « Free Queens »

« Article 77 bis of the Criminal Code, Obalisi Zebke interrupts. Husbands have the right to « use physical means to punish their wives, so long as these means do not lead to serious corporal damage, which are described as loss of sight, audition or speech, disfigurement or injuries which could lead to death. »***

My first book read this year for the Readers Prize at the Quai du Polar in Lyon. Marin Ledun, after his last book, a pamphlet against the tobacco industry, lobbying leading to serious crime and political corruption, To Hell with their Souls, this year he attacks Political and police corruption around the beer industry and the widespread use of prostitution powering sales. Seems unlikely? Then read on.

His story follows two separate investigations, the first by a French female journalist tracing back to the roots the smuggling rings putting underaged Nigerian prostitutes onto the streets of Europe and the second by A Nigerian traffic cop taking an interest, where no one else will into the deaths of two young Nigerian women found naked in a large bin by the roadside. The book is almost entirely set in Nigerian and the Free Queens in the title is one of several organisations fighting for women’s rights in country where the Criminal Code written by men is ends shivers down your spine, see the opening quote.

At one point early in the book, the police shoot at point blank range without warning one of the leaders of a network that provide young girls to the prostitution groups as he is choosing them from a row of scared girls, mostly sent by their families, in order to take control of his business and then the whole thing is presented to the public as a police success::

« The corrupt cow-boys parade, corrupt journalists from The Premium Times serve up their actions as heroic, the pigs fight amongst themselves to split the new territory. And the victims, in all this, who really cares? « ***

The beer industry at the heart of the story uses the girls in every bar to bring the drinks to the customers, The link between the politicians, the owners of the industry and the prostitution used to market the beer cannot be allowed to be made and in that the girls choices often pushed by their families, are between prostitution in Nigerian or in Europe.

The story is set during COVID and the violence of the lockdowns in such a poor country. How does the beer industry manage to sell beer in the Muslim North, how can it make prostitution work there, can corruption work there? Of course.

Another good read from Marin Ledun.

First Published in French as Free Queens by Gallimard in 2023.

*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

— Article 77 bis du Code criminel, l’interrompit Olabisi Zenke. Les maris ont le droit d’ »utiser les moyens physiques pour punir leur épouse, pourvu que cela ne donne pas lieu à des lésions corporelles graves, lesquelles sont décrites comme la perte de vue, de l’audition ou de la parole, la défiguration ou des blessures pouvant entraîner la mort ».

«Les cow-boys corrompus paradent, les journalistes corrompus du Premium Times leur servent la soupe, les porcs se battent entre eux pour se partager le nouveau territoire. Et les victimes, dans tout ça, qui s’en soucie vraiment?»

QUAI DU POLAR 2024

First quarter, Quai du Polar: easy to remember! So let’s read for the “Prix des Lecteurs”, the following 6 books are in the running for 2024.

• Personne ne meurt à Longyearbyen, Morgan Audic – Éditions Albin Michel
• Feux dans la plaine, Olivier Ciechelski – Éditions du Rouergue
• Gouine City confidential, Laurène Duclaud – La Manufacture de livres
• Free Queens, Marin Ledun – Éditions Gallimard
• Sans collier, Michèle Pedinielli – Éditions de l’Aube
• Femme portant un fusil, Sophie Pointurier – HarperCollins

The short list contains 6 books, I’m not a particular fan of series so the I won’t be reading the Pedinielli, having read the 2020 and 2022 offerings, this is the third book in the series presented for this prize. Leaves me five.

If you decide to read these books before the event to outguess the jury, let me know!

Tan Twan Eng ‘The House of Doors’

No tree is every ugly Willy, but I must say I prefer the name the Malays give it, did you know they call it the whispering tree?”
“Really, why?”
“They say that if you stand under a casuarina when the moon is at its fullest you can hear its leaves whispering to you.”
“And what would they be whispering?”
“Your future and all the things that you desire to know.”
“Is it true?”
A wan smile ghosted across her face and disappeared as though it had been filched by the wind, “I’ve never heard it say anything to me” she said.

I noticed this book when I saw that it had been selected for the Booker long list and read it before the short list was announced, what a surprise that was for me to see this excellent book didn’t make the cut!Crafted from a few ideas in one of Somerset Maugham’s short stories, The Letter from his book of short stories The Casuarina Tree this story brings to life the ex-pat community living in the Malacca Straits in the early nineteenth century.

William Somerset Maugham comes to visit an old university friend Robert Hamlyn in Penang in 1921 with his American assistant Gerald. It soon becomes obvious to Lesley Hamlyn, the narrator that the two are homosexuals only 25 years after the Oscar Wilde case, Lesley at first is not too happy about their staying with her. But Willy is a very good listener and as she talks to him we understand from the opening quote that her life has not been without drama.

As a little later Willy tells her about his travels in China resulting in his book On a Chinese Screen, he suddenly realises that Lesley is no typical ex-pat wife and that there is a story here:

‘Oh, how marvellous,’ she said, ‘you must be terribly pleased.’ She noticed the title on the cover. ‘On a Chinese Screen. Very evocative. A novel?’
‘A collection of … sketches … of what I saw in China – the places I visited, the people I met.’
A watchful expression stilled her face. ‘When were you there?’
‘Two years ago.’ He patted the space on the bench beside him.
Lesley remained standing. ‘Where did you go?’
‘We started … from Shanghai. We travelled two thousand miles up the Yangtze in a rice barge, into the heart of China. The Yangtze is the longest—’
‘The longest river in China, yes, yes, I know all that. How long were you there?’
‘Four or five months. We travelled deep inland, walked our feet flat.’
‘Did you ever …’ She stopped, then began again. ‘Did you ever come across any mention of Dr Sun Yat Sen?’
‘Just about everywhere we went. Intriguing chap, from all that I heard. Speaks English fluently too, apparently. I wish I could have … met him and talked to him.’
‘He passed through here about ten years ago.’
‘Really? What was he doing in Penang?
‘Raising money for the Tong Meng Hui, his party. He planned his revolution while he was staying here, you know.’
‘Did you meet him?’
‘Robert and I did, yes. A few times.’

Lesley then, over several days tells Willy the story of her life, of the year 1911, of her meeting with Sun Wen (Sun Yat Sen) and the work she did to help collect funds for him and of her finding out about her husband Robert’s affair, She them slowly tells him of her own secret affair that followed this discovery with a Chinese man named Arthur who also worked for Sun Wen:

“Oh, don’t look so distraught my dear, it was only a matter of time before he was asked to leave you know that.” Robert turned his whiskey tumbler around in his hand volleying shards of light onto the walls. “You’ll want to see him off tomorrow, do convey my farewell to him I don’t think we’ll ever see him here again.”
He still suspected that I had been having an affair with Sun Wen. My dearest husband might have his lover and we might not have shared the same bed in years but I was still his wife. We sat there in the silence, our true thoughts camouflaged from each other. What sustained a marriage kept it going year upon year I realised were the things we left unmentioned, the truths that we longed to speak forced back down our throats back into deepest darkest chambers of our hearts.

We discover two more facts that help to explain Lesley, first of all of her lover leaving many years earlier to fight for Sun Wen and whom she has never seen again and of her realisation that Robert’s affair was with a junior male lawyer working for him.

Maugham would of course use this information for a story but as Lesley confided to him Arthur was not her lovers real name.

First published in English by Canongate Books in 2023 as ‘The House of Doors’

Marie Charrel ‘Les Mangeurs de nuit’

Aika can read the embarrassment in Kuma’s face. That’s all she needs to understand: everything is lies. The fortune in America, the money, the life of a princess promised in the letters: hot air. A fraud aimed at making her cross the ocean to join him. Were her parents aware? No, of course not, they were cheated as well. Unless they kept the truth from her, happy to have placed her? Kuma Hirano didn’t accept her out of generosity, in spite of her impoverished family, but because he couldn’t hope for better.***

Here is my third book read for the Roman de Rochefort 2023, two singular stories are interwoven in British Columbia before, during and in the years after the second world war leading up to the meeting of Jack, a creekwalker and Hannah a Nisei, the daughter of Aika, a first generation immigrant from Japan, an Issei.

In 1926 at just 17 years old, Aika becomes a picture bride, after her family loose all of their money due to her father’s gambling. She is sent to Vancouver by boat to meet her new husband with promises of a fortune, along with other girls in the same situation but immediately realises the truth, as described in the opening quote, and of course there is no way back, her family would lose face. Aika is taken by her husband to a remote logging camp, peopled with only Japanese workers and where she is the only woman. Here she has a child, Hannah who doesn’t interest her, but hannah is brought up to her fathers stories concerning nature and spirits.

Jack also was brought up to similar stories:

At twenty years old, Jack joined the Creekwalkers, the job could have been made for him: hours crisscrossing the forest in canoe and on foot, concentrating solely on the rivers, watching over their fragile equilibrium. In a certain manner he had always done this. At Loggers Creek some call him the white Indian- Jack has no native blood in him, but his dad, white as well, brought him up as such with his second wife Ellen of the Gitga’at nation.***

They are both shaped by events specific to Canada, and maybe also the USA. As Japan becomes more nationalist and military before the second World War, The Japanese community is treated with more and more discrimination leading eventually to their being rounded up and taken away to camps where large numbers died due to neglect. Jack’s story is becoming better known as his younger half brother a member of the Gitga’at nation is rounded up and taken off to a school to be “civilised” and comes back broken with events leading up to him joining the army and being killed in the war against Japan.

Jack and Hannah, both withdrawn from people are brought together when Jack discovers her face down in a river after she has been attacked by a white bear. Her convalescence turns out to be his convalescence as well thanks to her understanding.

A worthy book on an interesting subject.

First published in French by Les Editions de l’Observatiore in 2023 as ‘Les mangeurs de nuit’

*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

Aika lit la gêne dans le regard de Kuma. Il n’en faut pas plus pour qu’elle comprenne : tout est faux. La fortune en Amérique, l’argent, la vie de princesse promise dans ses lettres : du vent. Une mystification destinée à la convaincre de traverser l’océan pour le rejoindre. Ses parents étaient-ils au courant ? Non, bien sûr, eux aussi ont été floués. À moins qu’ils ne lui aient caché la vérité, trop heureux de lui trouver une situation ? Kuma Hirano ne l’a pas acceptée pour femme par grandeur d’âme, en dépit de sa famille ruinée, mais parce qu’il ne pouvait pas prétendre à mieux.

À vingt ans, Jack avait rejoint les creekwalkers. Ce job était fait pour lui : des heures à sillonner la forêt en canoë ou à pied, accorder toute son attention aux rivières, surveiller son fragile équilibre. D’une certaine façon, il avait toujours fait cela. À Loggers Creek, certains le surnomment l’Indien blanc – Jack n’a pas de sang autochtone mais son père, blanc lui aussi, l’a élevé comme tel auprès d’Ellen, sa seconde femme, issue de la nation Gitga’at.

Helene Frappat ‘Three women disappear’

Working Girl is the story of a girl that lives in the suburbs. She would like not to have to undress to be loved and to have a career. When a supposed job interview develops into an attempted rape, she escapes from the car in her high heels and tights. ***

The subject of this book, my second read for the Roman de Rochefort 2023, is well researched and of particular interest, concerning a mother who’s name is “little girl”, her daughter and her grand-daughter, three well known Hollywood actresses whose lives are echos of the grandmother. All three disappear from the screen at the height of their fame, Tippi Hedren, Melanie Griffith and Dakota Johnson.

This is not an easy read, the style is wilfully fragmented with sometimes seven or eight paragraphs per page which, at least for me, distracted from the subject matter and diluted the message.

In the amazing backwards and forwards of facts presented, here are a few; Hitchcock’s abusive control of Tippi, leading to an event from her memoirs where she escapes from him in a manner echoed by the opening quote concerning her daughter in Working Girl, or the fact that Melanie was the name of the woman attacked by the birds that Tippi played whilst being controlled by Hitchcock. And then there is Dakota and the Fifty Shades of Grey, which under the saccharine cover of SM is yet again a woman in an abusive relationship.

My second paragraph explains why this will not be my choice, but once again the subject matter is rich.

First published in French by Actes Sud in 2023 as ‘Trois Femmes Disparaissent’

*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

Working Girl est l’histoire d’une banlieusarde qui a froid. Elle aimerait bien ne pas devoir se déshabiller pour être aimée et faire carrière. Quand un prétendu entretien d’embauche se transforme en tentative de viol, elle s’échappe de la limousine, en escarpins et collants voile.

Jerry Stahl ‘Nein, Nein, Nein.’

Beyond concentration camps—abstract, on some level, until you get there—the real hell I feared was being trapped in a rolling tour group. If Sartre was right that hell is other people—then other people in a tour bus traveling through Poland may be whatever they call the place below hell … or at least one corner of it.

This book, read for the Roman de Rochefort 2023, is not so much à novel as a cross between a travel memoir and a self administered psychotherapy. Stahl’s style is epitomised by the opening quote which I guess you could call dry or diversion humour, although I do wish he had the power to turn it off from time to time. Sure he opens up his life in great detail but always and I mean always with a quip.

Back to the subject of the book, Jerry has spent his whole life depressed, in despair, miserable and this would seem to be one of his justifications for going on this tour of death camps with a coach load of other Americans that have made this same choice. He explains his reasons in the following quote:

In the same way, when I was sixteen, and my father checked himself out, I’d been secretly relieved—handed a rational reason to feel as miserable as I’d already, irrationally, felt my entire life. Via my group tour, I hoped I could once more find relief in a situation where feeling miserable was appropriate. I could explore the land of genocide, visit sites of unspeakable suffering where bone-deep despair and depression—perhaps mankind’s darkest preexisting condition—was what you were supposed to experience.

Stahl tells a number of stories about his disparate tour group, for instance the elderly Shlomo, on a stop in Kraków asking one of their group, the Japanese American girl, Mariko, if she knows any good Chinese restaurants.

But his main point seems to be coming to terms with the “Disneyfication” of the death camps and the mixture of the strange with the weird, have we learnt nothing:

After the Wedding Cake we stop in a charming square, where I pop into a souvenir shop and buy some little Jews. Carved from linden trees, the popular souvenirs are about the size of salt shakers, and along with hand-painted beard and money bags, they come with an actual coin clutched in the rabbi’s hand. The shelves are full of them.

I have mixed views about this book, the story Stahl tells us is of great interest, I really just wish that the book had been a little less about him.

First published in English by Akashic Books in 2022 as ‘Nein, Nein, Nein’
Translated into French by Morgane Saysana and published by Rivages in 2023

The quotes as read in French before translation

Au-delà des camps de concentration — concept abstrait, il faut bien l’avouer, avant de se retrouver sur place —, le vrai enfer que je redoutais c’était d’être pris au piège d’un voyage organisé monté sur roues. Si Sartre disait, à juste titre, que l’enfer c’est les autres, les autres à bord d’un car de touristes sillonnant la Pologne doivent correspondre à ce niveau situé sous l’enfer et dont j’ai oublié le nom….

De la même manière qu’à seize ans, quand mon père avait tiré sa révérence, j’avais en secret éprouvé un certain soulagement (depuis toujours en proie à un mal-être irrationnel, je venais de trouver une raison rationnelle à ma mélancolie), j’avais bon espoir qu’en m’imposant une situation où le malheur était de rigueur, l’expérience Globule m’apporte une nouvel forme de soulagement. Je pourrais explorer le pays du génocide, visiter les théâtres d’indicibles souffrances, ou l’on était précisément censé ressentir le désespoir et la dépression jusque dans sa moelle épinière – peut-être la condition préalable la plus sinistre à laquelle l”humanité puisse se soumettre.

Après la Pièce Montée, nous arrêtons sur une placette croquignolette où je fais un saut dans un magasin de souvenirs our acheter des Juifs miniatures en bois; sculptées dans du tilleul, ces figurines, très en vogue ont à peu près la taille d’une salière, et en plusd’une barbe et d’une bourse peintes à la main, elles sont dotées d’une vraie pièce de monnaie serrée dans la main du rabbin. Les étagères en sont plein.

Gauz’ ‘Standing Heavy’

“Booker International Prize 2023: Books that made my shortlist for this prize.
“Standing Heavy”: In order of reading book number 3.

Employers are all too willing to overlook official status. The morphological profile is supposedly appropriate. Morphological profile . . . Black men are heavy-set; Black men are tall; Black men are strong; Black men are deferential; Black men are scary. It is impossible not to think of this jumble of “noble savage” clichés lurking atavistically in the minds of every White man responsible for recruitment and every Black man who has come to use these clichés to his advantage.

Gauz, a writer from the Ivory Coast, is both politically engaged and a satirist, and this book, released in France in 2014 tells the story of young and not so young black men arriving in France from west Africa. He takes us from the sixties to the present day. The opening quote is both is an example of his writing style, concise, pared back to the message. This work is full of pertinent observations and the definitions, for instance that money is more easily available in the wealthy shopping areas such as the Champs Élysée than in poor areas, the message given as here in a definition:

Fast STM. 7 seconds, typing the code included, is the time needed for an HSBC ATM on the Champs Élysée to cough up 20 euros. At the Crédit Lyonnais on the rue Louis Bonnet in Belleville, the same operation takes 43 seconds! On the Champs Élysée money spent as fast as it is given…In the poor quarters, even the ATMs think twice before giving you money.

The story loosely follows characters from the Ivory Coast in Paris as the times change, from the students of the sixties invited over to study and to work in their run down accommodation to the next generation after the oil crisis, of often undocumented migrants living in these same student flats, sub-let to many more of them by the previous generation, but where work was still plentiful, through the aftermath of the twin towers to the current day.

A clever book, fun but gets its message over.

First Published in french as “Debout-payé” in 2014, by Le nouvel Attila. Translated into English by Frank Wynne and published in 2022 as “Standing Heavy ” by Maclehose Press.

The quotes as read in French before translation

les regards sont volontairement bienveillants sur les situations administratives, le profil morphologique est prétendument adéquat. Profil morphologique…Les noirs sont costauds, les noirs sont grands, les noirs sont forts, les noirs sont obéissants, les noirs font peur. Impossible de ne pas penser à ce ramassis de clichés du bon sauvage qui sommeillent de façon atavique à la fois dans chacun des blancs chargés de recruitment, et dans chacun des noirs venus exploiter ces clichés en sa faveur.

Fast GAB. 7 secondes, composition du code comprise, c’est le temps qu’il faut à un guichet automatique de la HSBC des Champs-Élysées pour cracher 20 euros. Au Crédit Lyonnais de la rue Louis Bonnet à Belleville, la même opération prend 43 secondes! Aux Champs-Élysées, l’argent est vite donné, mais aussi vite dépensé… Dans les quartiers pauvres, même les distributeurs automatiques hésitent à vous refiler de l’argent.

Laurent Mauvignier ‘The Birthday Party’

As though by watching him she can guess what he’s thinking, when maybe he’s just waiting for her to come out of this police station where he’s brought her for the how many times now, two or three in two weeks, she can’t remember – what she sees, in any case, elevated slightly over the car park which seems to incline somewhat past the grove of trees, standing near the chairs in the waiting room between a scrawny plant and a concrete pillar painted yellow on which she could read appeals for witnesses if she bothered to take an interest, is, because she’s slightly above it, overlooking and thus observing a misshapen version of it, a bit more packed down than it really is, the silhouette, compact but large, solid, of this man whom, she now thinks, she’s no doubt been too long in the habit of seeing as though he’s still a child

Laurent Mauvignier’s writing, here as in previous books, examines the protagonists feelings precisely and in detail, allowing us the time to piece together our own view of the story from the sum of the feelings described. Here in this book shortlisted for the Booker International Prize, there are four main characters leading up to the birthday party living in a little hamlet of three houses. We are introduced initially to Christine, an aged artist living in one of the houses and a family of three, Bergogne, his daughter, Ida and his wife Marion who will be celebrating her fortieth birthday the next day. The description illustrated here in the opening quote of Christine looking out of the police station window at the beginning of the book is an example of the precision of Mauvignier’s descriptive writing, we hear what Christine is thinking, the relative position of watcher and watched and how she sees him.

But who is Marion? This question is not immediately apparent but it is made clear to us that Christine, who looks after Ida after school each day, and has known Bergogne all of his life, has no affinity for Marion and thinks that this glamorous looking woman who comes from nowhere to live in this out of the way hamlet with Bergogne, a small time farmer, is not what she seems. We learn from Bergogne’s guilty visit to town to see a young prostitute that all is not straightforward in their marriage.
Marion is a breath of fresh air for her female colleagues at work, she will not be submissive with her management to keep her job, we learn of her view of the “project leader”.

As the birthday party nears, this slow moving preparation turns into a thriller as Marion’s party is hijacked by the arrival on the scene of three dangerous and diversely armed brothers from Marion’s past. This was an enormously enjoyable story, some 600 pages long and keeps you interested right up to the last gunshot!

First Published in french as “Histoires de La nuit” in 2020, by Les Éditions de Minuit. Translated into English by Daniel Levin Becker and published in 2023 as “The Birthday Party ” by Fitzcarraldo Editions.