Dear All,

To help you through the cold and grey month of November, the London book office would like to present you a selection of French books you may not have heard about yet.

First of all, our main focus this week is on a fantastic and incredibly powerful testimony, certainly one of the most beautiful book which has ever been written about WWI. La Peur, Gabriel Chevallier, (Le Dilletante) first published in 1930, is "one of the most lucid, most human, most independent books and perhaps the best in all respects ever inspired by war.” Les Hommes du Jour, 1930

Moving forward to the present time, we have two novels with very different tones but both with desperate and moving characters who reinvent themselves through love and adventures in the Paris streets.

 In L’Année de l’éclipse, (Sabine Wespieser) Basile, a professor of philosphy, is at a critical juncture of his life: his wife and his daughter have just left him, his weekly sessions with his psychiatrist have reached an impasse; and above all, his attempt to continue the general philosophical survey he’s been working on for years have resulted in nothing but sterile rumination. And suddenly love appears.
In his beautifully written book, Philippe de la Genardière, through his fascinating character, explores daily life as reinvented by himself: music, literature, philosophy, urban drifting in phantasmagoric Paris, magic of the female body… and interrogates, through literature, the folly of our contemporary world.

Much lighter, Peut-être une histoire d’amour, Martin Page (L’Olivier) is a romantic comedy whose charm rests entirely on the character of Virgil. Returning home from an ordinary day, Virgil  finds a rather disturbing message on his answer machine: Clara informs him that she is leaving him. But he has no recollection of this so-called Clara. Failing to find a logical explanation, he ends up making an unexpected decision: to win back this woman he doesn’t know.

But let’s leave this male universe to find what fascinated them. Here are two deeply moving novels recounting women’s destinies. In Laver les ombres (Actes Sud), two women are reunited to confront together the shadows of the past: Lea, dancer, who can never free herself from the painful grace which leaves no room for pleasure and the true intimacy of love, and her mother who was forced by the man she loved  to sell her body in a bordello of Naples during the war. In a language at once restrained and vibrant, Jeanne Benameur has choreographed the mysteries of familial transmission and the fervent assumption that words save us.

"Lacrimosa" means “she who weeps”, but also “she who makes others weeps”. Part recitation, part novel, Lacrimosa, Régis Jauffret (Gallimard) is a text for two voices which unfolds in the form of an exchange of letters between a narrator and a young woman who has just committed sucide. A strange and poignant dialogue with the hereafter, allowing us to focus on the moment of real life that are so rare in our existence.

And to end on an exotic tone, we suggest you meet some fascinating travellers and adventurers from the XIXth Century. In 1881, Edouard Manet did a portrait of a colourful contemporary figure, Eugène Petruiset . In Un Chasseur de lions, Olivier Rolin recounts the adventures of Petruiset combined with various episodes from Manet’s life. It is also a journey through space (colonial Algeria, Lima, Valparaiso, Terra del fuego), time (the Paris of Napoleon III, the war of 1870, the Commune), and literary memories (Baudelaire, Zola, Maupassant, and others). 

From New York of the Roaring Twenties to the Keynan Jungle, Martin and Osa Johnson were the most famous lovers and adventurers of their day. La Beauté du monde, Michel le Bris (Grasset), is a superb and imaginative saga where the spirit of adventure is ever present.

Bonne lecture!

Laure de Vaugrigneuse, Brendan Wright  et Paul Fournel