Tag: french literature

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.

Négar Djavadi ‘Arène’

Sam’s brain thinks ahead at full speed. It’s out of the question for her to give him this chance, then have to watch his devilish efficient demonstration of how to do it, dropping a little comment on the way such as: « at one time or another you have to know how to get things done. We’re not going to wake him up softly with a cup of tea! » a phrase she could quickly translate as « what the fuck are you up to, Baydar, stood there whispering sweet nothings in his ear! »***

This is Négar Djavadi’s second book, Arène, as in the Arena in Ancient Rome. The real leading role in this book is the forgotten Eastern arrondissements of Paris, centred here on Belleville, where the different housing estates have been forgotten by the politicians, they are poor, with an economy based on drug trafficking and tit for tat killings between the young gang members of the different estates, added to this are the many migrants sleeping in the streets.

A young man dies on the bank of a canal and the powder keg explodes.

Djavadi tells this story through a huge cast of characters, firstly from the point of view of Benjamin Grossman, in charge of the sector « France » of BeCurrent, the primary competitor of Netflix, back from Los Angeles and visiting his childhood home in one of these housing estates. In between being a person of major importance for the local entertainment industry and being unknown on the streets of Belleville, and his culture shock coming back to this from LA. Grossman may be responsible for the death, having pushed the young man, thinking he had stolen Grossman’s phone, the man, Issa Zeitounï, falls awkwardly and bangs his head before getting up and walking away.

There is the young policewoman Baydar, of Turkish origin, already disowned by her family for joining the police, illustrated in the opening quote, under pressure from her macho team mate, Dalloz and who finds Issa by the banks of the canal, thinks he is a drugged migrant, shakes him and then ceding to the pressure, kicking him to try to get a response, before discovering he is dead.

There is Camille a young sixth form student and video activist who films Baydar and edits her video to show the police not even leaving the local people alone when they are dead but kicking their corpses:

Like everyone on Twitter, Camille is after popularity and followers. Anyone who would sign up to a social network without these aims would be relegated to being a third class citizen, an”Invisible”, a “Beggar”, condemned to a long stay in the hold with the rats and other forgotten people.***

And then there is Stéphane Jahanguir Sharif, an observer of society, as his Twitter handle goes, who’s part in the drama is to use his followers to whip up dissent, and his trusted supporters on the ground to lead the violence.

There wouldn’t be a story without a tragedy as things get out of hand, there will be winners and losers but few will be indifferent, and of course the local politician tries to shine.

There were a lot of characters, requiring concentration to follow all of the strands of this story, looking at how little it can take in our on line society to whip up violence. I would read this book again.

First Published in French by Levi in 2020.

*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

Le cerveau de Sam anticipe à toute vitesse. Hors de question qu’elle lui laisse cette opportunité, puis le regarde achever sa démonstration, redoutablement efficace, balançant au passage une petite phrase du genre: « À un moment, il faut savoir en découdre. On va pas se l’jouer pensionnat chic, réveil en douceur et compagnie! » Phrase au qu’elle se dépêcherait de traduire par: « qu’est-ce que tu fous, Baydar, plantée là, à lui susurrer des petits mots doux à l’oreille! »

Comme tout le monde sur Twitter, Camille court après la popularité et les followers. D’ailleurs, s’inscrire sur un réseau social sans set objectif vous reléguerait très vite au rang de citoyen de troisième classe, un Invisible, un Gueux, condamné à un séjour prolongé dans la cale parmi les rats et les autre oubliés.

Didier van Cauwelaert ‘Un aller simple’

“I started in life as a child found by accident. Stolen with a car as it happens. An Ami 6 of Citroën heritage. So they called me Ami 6 so as not to forget. Well these are my origins so to speak. As time went on they shortened it to Aziz.”***

After my mother in law died, I picked up a few of her books, this one ‘One Way’, priced at 89,00F from 1994, it’s going back a bit but I think I may have bought if for her. Incidentally it won the Prix Goncourt that year.

Aziz Kemal (see the opening quote), brought up in Marseilles by gypsies that found him in a car they’d stolen, had no identity papers, nothing new there, where he was brought up nobody did, but nobody got caught, except this time Aziz did, and at his own wedding.

Aziz is then expelled to Morocco, back then they imagined he would be accompanied by a cultural attaché to help him reintegrate Morocco. (Bless them, no flights to Rwanda for processing back then!) Except of course neither he nor the attaché had ever been to Morocco.

When pushed by Jean-Pierre Schneider, the young attaché about where he comes from, he makes up a story about a village in a secret valley, Irghiz and so begins their journey.

Must say I enjoyed this book, are they both looking for something, besides this non existant village? Well of course they are.

First Published in french as “Un aller Simple” in 1984, by Albin Michel

Translated into English by Mark Polizzotti and published in 2003 by Other Press

***My translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

J’ai commencé dans la vie comme enfant trouvé par erreur. Volé avec la voiture, en fait. Une Ami 6 de race Citroën. Alors on m’a appelé Ami 6 en souvenir. Ce sont mes origines, quoi. Avec le temps, pour aller plus vite, c’est devenu Aziz.

Mariette Navarro ‘Ultramarins’

—Captain, the pump seems to be adjusting its rhythm, it’s doing it to…..well to, don’t take me for a fool, to play music. Captain, do you hear me?
—I don’t take you for a fool.
—A regular rhythm, changing with the weather. What’s unbelievable is that it doesn’t always slow down. If there was a failure, it would slow down. But here, no, sometimes it speeds up too.

This book, my third read for the Prix du Roman de Rochefort 2022, has a mystical theme, a cargo ship with a disreet female captain and a skeleton crew is crossing the Atlantic Ocean. In this ultra connected world where cargo ships and their proress are tracked by satelite, the captain takes the unheard of decision to stop the ship and to let all of the crew except herself, lowered in boats, go for a swim. No other ship comes near them in this time and the captain intends to make up for lost time before arriving at their destination. All takes place as imagined but there seems to be some doubt about the number of crew members, weren’t there only 20 who went swimming?

They laugh.
But all of they are thinking of the number, 21, at the strangeness of the sound of this number. It should be said that there are a lot of new, very young, ones this time, you can mix them up, they look the same these young muscular boys who thought they were going to discover America or conquer the world.****

Slowly the story takes on it’s mysterious form, firstly with the mysterious 21st passenger and then in the weather with the sensitive captain accepting the strangeness as first in this tropical area a mist descends upon them:

As if she had to feel it, feel it through her skin to understand what is happening to her, she pulls the metal door towards herself and exits. She wants to feel the consistency of the mist, to know it’s temperature. There, that’ll be her swim.****

And then, as illustrated in the opening quote, the ship itself seems to take on the mystical shape of the story, could it be the 22nd crew member?

A short poetical story, advancing at the slow but unstoppable speed of the ship itself into the unreal.

First Published in french as “Ultramarins” in 2021, by Quidam
*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

Comme s’il fallait en passer, toujours en passer par la peau pour comprendre ce qui lui arrive, elle tire vers elle la porte métallique et sort. Elle veut sentir la consistance de cette brume, et connaitre la température. voilà, ce sera sa baignade à elle.

Ils rient.
Mais tous ils pensent à ce nombre, 21, à l’étrangeté du son de ce nombre. Il faut dire qu’il y a beaucoup de nouveaux cette fois, de très jeunes, on s’y perd, ils se resemblent, ces petits gars musclés qui croyaient qu’ils allaient découvrir l’Amérique ou conquérir le monde.

—Commandante, on dirait que la pompe ajuste son tempo, qu’elle en joue, pour faire…… pour faire, ne me prends pas pour un fou, pour faire de la musique. Commandante, vous me recevez?
—Je ne vous prends pas pour un fou.
—Un rythme régulier, qui varie avec le temps. Ce qui est incroyable, c’est que ça ne ralentit pas toujours. Si c’était une panne, ça devrait ralentir. Mais là, non, parfois ça accélère aussi.

Emmanuelle Fournier-Lorentz ‘Villa Royale’

We had no money, as Victor pointed out to me one evening as I moaned about not having a television. “Don’t hold your breath waiting for some in the near future,”..”to begin with, haven’t you noticed that we still don’t have any furniture?”
mother had bought a red plastic table, that was on sale, for the kitchen but we only had one chair. Charles had come across a flowery matress in the street that we used as a sofa on which we ate our breakfast on rainy days.***

This book, a first by this promising author, is my second read for the Prix du Roman de Rochefort 2022. Palma, a yound child at the outset is the narrator of this strange story of a family, her mother, Victor, Palma’s younger brother and Charles her older brother. Palma tells us of her earliest memories of looking out of the back window of their car at the asphalt disappearing behind them, much like their childhood. The book begins with the family leaving their house in Rue Chauvelot, Paris and moving to the Reunion Island, in a seemingly hurried manner. This first house move, if a little disorienting, arriving in the tropics, slowly reveals their precarious state of affairs, as Victor notices in the opening quote.

The children are not yet aware of the exact state of their affairs, thinking that as things haven’t worked out that they can just move back home. but of course they hadn’t just moved for a better opportunity as they grow to realise:

Charles continued:
It’s very simple. We’ll go back, mum. Your’ll look for work, Lakushka will look after us, everything will be fine….. To tell the truth, it’s a relief for me.
“And where will we live?”
“Well, Rue Chauvelot.”
My mothers eyes widened.
“We don’t have the house in Rue Chauvelot any more.”
“It’s been sold?” I asked.
I saw mum hesitate.
“It’s been seized”, she answered, her eyes lowered to her cigarette.***

As time goes on they seem to only stay in one place for a few months at a time, their mother always books them into a new school but sometimes they come home and for nearly no reason they throw everything into the car and they’re off again, as Palma later remarks:

Moving three times a year neither effaces our names nor hides our trace. As the car reached the first bare fields surrounding the village, we knew that the act of fleeing with this smell of fresh snow would cling to us. Afterwards it can’t be shaken off.****

As the book advances we learn the reasons for their lifestyle and the effects it has on them, especially on the two boys and was there a reason for their father to commit suicide? An ambitios and original first novel./span>

First Published in french as “Villa Royale” in 2022, by Gallimard
*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

Nous n’avions pas d’argent, comme me l’avais fait remarquer Victor un soir où je me plaignais de ne pas avoir la télévision. “Ne t’attends pas á ce qu’on ait sitôt.”..”tu n’as pas remarqué? Premièrement, on n’a toujours pas de meubles.”
Ma mère avait acheté en solde une table en plastique rouge pour la cuisine, mais nous n’avions qu’une chaise. Charles avait dégoté dans la rue un matelas à fleurs qui faisait office de canapé sur lequel nous prenions le petit-déjeuner les jours où pleuvait.
“Ensuite, nous n’avons pas de téléphone, ce qui, tu l’as remarqué aussi, ne déplaît à personne.”

Charles à repris:
C’est très simple. On rentre, Maman. Tu chercheras du travail, Lakushka nous garderas, tout ira bien…. À vrai dire, ça me soulage.
— Et où allons-nous vivre?
— Eh bien, rue Chauvelot.
Ma mère à écarquillé les yeux.
— La maison de la rue Chauvelot, on ne l’a plus.
— Elle a été vendue?” ai-je demandé.
J’ai vu l’hésitation de ma mère.
— Elle a été saisie”, a-t-elle répondu, les yeux baissés sur sa cigarette.

Déménager trois fois par an n’éfface ni nos noms, ni notre trace.
Lorsque la voiture a atteint les premiers champs pelés qui entouraient le village, nous savions que la fuite, avec son odeur de neige fraîche, s’accrochait à nous. Ensuite impossible de s’en défaire.

Eric Vuillard ‘Une sortie honorable’

This may seem odd, but there had never been a french settler established in Cao Bang, no district, european social life, not a single enterprising trader, not a single hotel owner in search of adventure, not a single person to pave the way, no one…..The Cao Bang Mining Company was created in 1905; and in order to function only needed a few european engineers and foremen, that’s all, and a military outpost to protect themselves.***

This book, my first read for the Prix du Roman de Rochefort 2022, is written by Eric Vuillard, the 2017 winner of the prix Goncourt for ‘L’ordre du jour’ which took us to a secret meeting in the Reichstag leading to the financing of the 1933 elections and the petty negotiations between the different people present setting history on its unstoppable path to war. Here Vuillard takes us to an initial meeting in the National Assembly and the inevitable consequences of greed, leading to war in South East Asia. What are the french interests in Indochina? As he explains illustrated here in the opening quotes, it was not a question of a colony and the difficulties of communities living alongside one another, in both Cao Bang where the initial battles took place up to Diên Biên Phu where the french army was defeated, there were no settlers.

Vuillard takes us to a debate over the Indochina ‘situation’ in the house and through descriptions of the different political actors arguing to support the venality of the business interests, and of Mendès-France spelling out in detail that France had neither the means nor the real will to keep Indochina at all costs, he swiftly gives us a panoramic view of the political situation. Mendès, and the truth of course, are not welcomed in the assembly.

The truth” continued Mendès, his face showing no emotion, almost sad, “in a moment where so many other worries weigh on us, we do not have the means to impose the military solution that we have pursued for so long now in Indochina****

Vuillard takes us through the inevitable failures and the gross incomptence of the military commanders appointed by Paris, leading to a modern military power being overcome by peasants. He also introduces the American connection, including De Lattre de Tassigny’s visit to the US and the loaded questions prepared for him.

“Can you tell us why Indochina Is important for we Americans?”
As usual, the question seems abrupt, but in reality it is made to measure. It would seem to have been written by the Army communication department. And in spite of this De Lattre gets bogged down, he can’t find his words. At this moment any word will do, any tiny forgotten word, even a spasm, a sigh…….Then, as if appearing from below the waterline, the General takes a deep breath and adds “that Indochina is the keystone of South-East asia and that this keystone is surrounded….”.****

The description of the CIA and in Particular Dulles’s visit to Paris should leave the reader speechless:

Bidault opens the door without knocking, crosses the room, tripping on the carpet, and sitting on a chair opposite the secretary of state, seemingly overwhelmed: “do you know what Dulles just said to me?” Schumann looks looks at him confused: ” He offered me two atomic bombs to save Diên Biên Phu”****

A strong start to the 2022 prix de Rochefort, and for anyone unfamiliar with these events in history a must read moment!

First Published in french as “Une sortie honorable” in 2021, by Babel

The quotes as read in French before translation

Cela peut sembler curieux, mais il n’y a même jamais eu, un colon français établi à Cao Bang, nul quartier, nul vie sociale européenne, pas un commerçant entreprenant, pas un hôtelier aventureux, pas un seul premier de cordée, personne……La société des mines de Cao Bang avait vu le jour en 1905; et pour fonctionner, elle n’avait besoin que de quelques ingénieurs, de contremaîtres européens, c’est tout, et pour se protéger, il lui fallait un poste militaire.

“La vérité, reprit Mendès, le visage clos, presque triste, “dans un moment où tant d’autres soucis nous accablent c’est que nous n’avons pas les moyens matériels d’imposer en Indochine la solution militaire que nous y avons poursuivie si longtemps.”

“Pouvez-vous nous dire maintenant quelle est l’importance de l’Indochine pour nous Américains?”
Comme d’habitude, la question a quelque chose d’abrupt, mais en réalité elle est faite sur mesure. On dirait qu’elle a été rédigée par le service de communication de l’armée. Et pourtant de Lattre s’embourbe, il cherche ses mots. À ce moment, n’importe quel mot ferait l’affaire, un tout petit mot oublié, un spasme même, un soupir….Alors, comme s’il jaillissait brusquement hors de l’eau, le général reprend sa respiration et ajoute “que l’Indochine est la clé de voûte du Sud-Est asiatique, et que cette clé de voûte est encerclée…”

Bidault ouvre la porte sans frapper, traverse la pièce, trébuchant sur le tapis, et s’asseyant sur une simple chaise face à secrétaire d’État, l’air accablé, bredouille: “Savez-vous ce que Dulles m’a dit?” Schumann le regarde, désorienté: “Il m’a proposé deux bombes atomiques pour sauver Diên Biên Phu”

Metin Arditi ‘Le Turquetto’

Stood up, his right hand grasping his cane, the master was unable to tear his eyes away from the canvas. He had before him the most beautiful portrait that had ever been painted. The lines were of an absolute precision. And the colours…. How had he managed to obtain such nuances in the darker colours? There was the young man’s look, the beauty of his age, a charm, but a force as well, a kindness…. He moved forward towards the painting looking for the signature. He couldn’t find it. His eyesight weakened…. He tried again three times and finally found it, in the lower right hand corner, a capital T, painted in dark grey.img_3098
He stepped back from the painting and once more took it in slowly. What he needed to do to save it was shameful. and even obscene. But there was no other solution but this, and he did his duty.***

Welcome to Metin Arditi’s art world, in this work of fiction Arditi begins with a chromographic examination report leaving some doubt as to whether the work, “Man With A Glove” from the Louvre was actually by Titien, leading him to create the character the Turquetto, who had actually painted this work, and why there is no other trace of Turquetto’s work, taking us right up to the terrible decision by Titien himself to add his signature to the painting as illustrated in the opening quote.

The book written in three parts takes us from sixteenth century Constantinople, with its varied population of Turks, Jews, Greeks and Armenians, each with their own religions and very different rights but all having one thing in common, reproducing any of God’s creation is forbidden. Elie a young jewish child who had been brought up in a greek family and who moves easily amongst the Turkish merchants eventually escapes to venice and on the journey takes a Greek name, becoming a christian overnight.

In the second part of the book in Venice, due to heis natural skill but also due to his mixed cultural experience he becomes a painter of great renown, but as he matures, he finds he no longer wants to hide who he really and eventually falls foul of the inquisition, finally escaping and returning to Constantinople where things are becoming more difficult for the Greeks and the Jews.

This is a fascinating story as Arditi draws us a picture of the sixteenth century world and the inability of the different people to live with each other, any resemblance with what is happening around us today is purely coincidental!

First Published in French as “Le Turquetto” in 2011 by Actes Sud
*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

Debout, la main droite agrippée à sa canne, le maitre n’arrivait pas à détacher ses yeux de la toile. il avait devant lui le plus beau portrait qui ait jamais été peint. Un trait d’une précision absolue. Et des couleurs… Comment avait-il réussi à obtenir de telles nuances dans les sombres? Il y avait dans le regard du jeune homme la beauté de son âge, un charme, mais aussi une force, une bonté….
Il s’approcha du tableau et chercha la signature. Il ne la trouva pas. Ses yeux déclinaient…. Il s’y reprit à trois fois et fini par la répérer, au coin inférieur droit, un T majuscule, peint en gris foncé.
Il s’éloigna de la toile et une fois encore la regarda longuement. Ce qu’il devait faire pour la sauver était indigne. Et même obscène. Mais il n’y avait d’autre solution que celle-là, et il fit son devoir.

Antoine Bello ‘The Falsifiers’

“What was the plan? asked Magawati dryly.
“The plan was to, one hour exactly before the Sputnik 2 launch, send a press release from TASS to around fifty media outlets announcing that the satellite had onboard a two year old dog called Laïka.”
“Even though the satellite was empty?” asked Youssef, in disbelief.
“Even though the satellite was empty,” repeated Vargas, “What happened?”
***

After a hectic month of November, reading for the Roman de Rochefort and for the Booker Prize, I was having trouble getting back in the saddle so, off to the library and after twenty minutes with Véronique, “I need something easy to read with a certain intrigue”. Away I came with the first of this trilogy by Antoine Bello and, shame on me, I’d never heard of him. He may well be an American author who writes in French, but his main protagonist here is Icelandic, Sliv Dartunghuvet. Sliv, fresh from university is easily recruited by an environmental research company, one of many fronts for a tentacular organisation, the CFR (Consortium de Falsification du Réel). Sliv asks some questions but faced with an absence of answers from his recruiting agent, Gunnar, he turns out to be a trusting fellow:

And what can be said about the motives of CFR? Gunnar talked away normally, without ever revealing anything of importance. Three conversations later, and I had no more idea than the first day. Why did the CFR falsify reality? With what money and on behalf of who?***

Sliv soon learns of some of the older cases the CFR has worked on such as Laïca from the opening quote who never actually existed. Sliv is pulled into the ludic side of the job, working on scenarios that, after examination and correction, the organisation may decide to put into action.

Sliv turns out to be an exceptional creator of scenarios and begins to take more and more risks until he puts the organisations existance at risk and has the unfortunate experience of meeting the Special Ops.

This was a really good book to get back to reading, this first book of the series was written back in 2007 and treats the pre-internet falsification of reality as Dartunghuvet climbs the lower levels of the CFR, waiting to see how the later books take on the whole fake news thing.

First Published in french as “Les falsificateurs” in 2007, by Gallimard *** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

—Quel était le plan? demanda Magawati d’une voix sèche.
—Le plan consistait, une heure exactement après le lancement de Spoutnik 2, à envoyer un communiqué de l’agence Tass à une cinquantaine de rédactions annonçant que le satelite emportait à son bord une chienne de deux ans du nom de Laïka.
—Alors que le satellite était vide? demanda Youssef, incredule.
—Alors que le satellite était vide, répéta Vargas. Que se passa-t-il?

Et que dire des mobiles du CFR? Gunnar discourait habituelement, sans jamais rien révéler d’important. Trois conversations plus tard, j’en savais à peine plus qu’au premier jour. Pourquoi le CFR falsifiait-il le réel? Avec quel argent et pour le copte de qui?

Frédérique Boyer ‘Le lièvre’

I knew he was lieing. But I wanted to believe him. His voice had all the reassurance of a warrior who had suffered a terrible setback and was looking for revenge. And it would take the time it would take. img_0259He had long been locked in the room of lost chances. Life was a dangerous game. There were only a fews hours left for him to find the key to free himself.***

This book, my seventh read for the Prix du Roman de Rochefort 2021, a relatively short book with the narrator revisiting an events in his childhood as one of his parents neighbours who lived above them befriended the narrator who needed to leave the straightjacket of his home as he approached adolescence. His neighbour is a rough character who is supposed to have a job involving driving around the south west of France towards the end of the sixties but doesn’t actually seem to do much as he drives around with the boy in the car. The narrators description of him in the opening paragraph seems to sum him up well.

His view in his own family looking back is in a way like his view of the neighbour, the word “inexorablel seems to say that their fate is also fixed:

It wasn’t necessarily sad, or it doesn’t seem so to me these days when I see us so, and we resembled small characters from a silent movie, trying hard, to the beat of some infernal music, to repeat the mistakes without seeing them, led inexorably forward as if by a cruel joke they didn’t understand.***

He seems at one point to ask himself why he keeps mulling over these memories so many years later and the answer is in the precise words of his analysis.

Because, without a doubt, like an assassin, childhood always revisits the the scene of it’s crime.***

So what was the event that troubles him all these years later? Some thime before the police come to get the neighbour, whom he never sees again, he is taken hunting and the neighbour pushes him to shoot at a wild hare, he is retrospectively only partially taken in by the fact that his shot killed the hare, supposing that the neighbour fired in quick succesion to kill the hare. It is the carrying the hare back to their appartment block, not being able to bring it back to life and the moment that he realises that dearh is definitive that troubles him so much. This moment far more than the very public arrest of the neighbour.

A short troubling book, well written but which didn’t ring a bell for me.

First Published in french as “Le lièvre” in 2021, by Gallimard
*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

Je savais qu’il mentait. Mais je voulais y croire. Sa voix avait l’assurance d’un guerrier qui aurait subi un revers terrible et promettrait de revenir se venger. Et cela prendrait le temps qu’il faudrait. Il avait depuis longtemps élu domicile dans la salle des chances perdues. La vie était un jeu dangereux. Il n’avait plus que quelques heures pour trouver la clé qui le libérerait.

Ce n’était pas forcément triste, ou ça ne l’est plus tout à fait à mes yeux aujourd’hui quand je nous revois ainsi, et que nous ressemblons alors aux petits personnages d’un film muet, appliqués sur une musique infernale à enchaîner les erreurs sans les voir, et entraînés inexorablement dans la mécanique d’un gag cruel qui leur échappe.

Parce que sans doute, comme l’assassin, l’enfance revient toujours sur les lieux de son crime.

Florence Aubenas ‘L’inconnu de la poste’

One evening, he’d imagined a bank job in front of the other two sat on the sofa. He’d pulled one of Corinne’s stockings over his head, waving about as if he had a shotgun. img_0248There’d be two motorbikes, one of them would be burnt at the bank, then everyone would head of into another county. He’d seen it in an american film. Rambouille shrugged his shoulders: “You don’t even have a bike license.”***

This book, my tenth read for the Prix du Roman de Rochefort 2021, is based on another true story, investigated by Florence Aubenas. In a small town in the Bugey region of France where everybody knows everybody, and the only employment in the area is ensured by the “Plastic Valley” which originally developed in the sixties and seventies in mostly family businesses with little investment or health standards. Unemployment is high as is petty crime. The postmistress is found murdered in her micro post office. At once the thought is that the murderer must be an outsider, but as none is found suspicion falls slowly falls on a marginal character, living in a run down flat opposite the post office, “the actor”, Thomassin. The opening quote of him showing his friends how he would carry out a robbery was later brought against him in the case:

Aubenas tells the story of Thomassin and his band of friends, Thomassin had been brought up from foster home to foster home, with his brother Jerôme before being discovered at a casting by a french film director looking for someone who really looked that they could live the part of the rough character in a film, a film for which he won the major award of the year for a promising young actor. But with no real outside support he was happy to show off to his friends in his housing estate and easily spent all of his money. A pattern he was to repeat with each of his following more and more spaced apart films until we find him living in Bugey where he had once been weaned off drugs by a childhood friend. As after the murder the police were listening in on his phone calls, they hear him, drunk, talking to his brother about his youth:

Thomassin dials Jerôme’s number…..”at mother Picolo’s place, her son forced us to do blow jobs, we were raped.” He said “I lost my virginity when I was eight”.***

The story is a series of tragedies. The micro post office only existed because the father of Catherine Burgod, the dead woman, had been mayor for a number of years and had used his influence to keep the agency open for his daughter. Thomassin’s friends all die from substance abuse and Thomassin himself is incarcerated for several years awaiting trial before being freed when the law would not let them keep him inside any longer without trial. France’s current justice minister, a previous famous barrister had taken up his case. This was when Florence Aubenas first heard of Thomassin:

The First time I heard of Thomassin was from a Casting Director he’d worked with at the start of his acting career. She showed me some of the letters he had sent her from prison.***

Florence Aubenas keeps us on tack with this interesting read full of detailed background on each of the characters, fascinating from start to end.

First Published in french as “L’inconnu de la poste” in 2021, by L’Olivier*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

Un soir, il a imaginé un braquage devant les deux autres posés sur son canapé. Il s’était enfilé un vieux bas de Corinne sur le visage, gesticulant comme avec un fusil. Il y aurait deux motos, dont l’une serait brûlée sur place, puis tout le monde se replierait dans un autre département. Il avait vu le truc dans un film américain. Rambouille avait haussé les épaules: “T’as même pas le permis.”

Thomassin compose le numéro de Jérôme……”Chez la mère Picolo, son fils nous obligeait à faire des fellations, nous avons été violés.” Il dit: “moi j’ai été dépucelé à huit ans”.

La première fois que j’ai entendu parler de Thomassin, c’était par une directrice de casting avec qui il avait travaillé á ses débuts d’acteur. Elle m’avait montré quelques-unes des lettres qu’il lui avait envoyées de prison.