Grimbert´s novel is organised into five sections. The first sets the scene: we are introduced to the narrator Philippe, a sickly only child of athletic parents running a sports clothing shop. Philippe is awed by his parents Maxime and Tania, particularly his father, to whom he feels he is a disappointment. He becomes obsessed by a make-believe brother, older, stronger and more popular than he, whom he constantly evokes, unwittingly causing pain to his parents. We also meet Louise, a close friend who works next door to the Grimbert´s shop as a physiotherapist and masseuse. The second chapter tells the idyllic story of Philippe´s parents´ meeting and courtship in wartime rural France.The third (from which this excerpt is taken) marks a brutal return to reality: Louise reveals to Philippe that they are all Jewish, that during the war she went into hiding with Maxime and Tania, and that Maxime´s first wife Hannah and their son, Simon, were killed in the concentration camps. Thus the make-believe brother becomes a painful reality. The day after I turned fifteen, I finally discovered what I´d always known. Philippe ponders the shocking facts during long afternoons with Louise, without telling his parents. The fourth and longest chapter serves as a correction of the second: the fantasy Philippe had invented is replaced by reality, in a depiction of his parents´ actual experience of the war. This chapter is particularly powerful; the extreme conditions of wartime life are made even more dangerous by Tania and Maxime´s overwhelming attraction for each other.Tragedy strikes when Hannah commits an act of suicidal defiance: on the point of passing the demarcation line, but devastated by the magnetic tension she can feel between her husband and Tania, she voluntarily surrenders herself and her son to the enemy. Maxime and Tania´s love is thus tainted by terrible guilt, and they find themselves unable to establish a life together until all hope of Hannah and Simon´s survival has evaporated. Their eventual life together is scarred by total silence around the subject: Philippe is the child of this secret. The final chapter concerns the eighteen year old Philippe´s ultimately liberating confrontation with his parents, and his decision to train as a psychotherapist in order to help others escape from the secrets that suffocate them.
This unusual, personal reflection on World War 2 is well served by Grimbert´s deceptively simple and limpid style, which gives the subject matter the prominence it deserves. Clearly an autobiographical novel (Grimbert does indeed practise as a psychotherapist), Un Secret is a poignant depiction of a childhood and adolescence intimately affected by the Shoah, and a haunting meditation on the psychological effects of secrecy. Given narrative pace by the dramatic nature of the story, particularly the fourth chapter, this is an accessible and hard-hitting read.
World English rights sold to Portobello Books
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