|
Fiction
Sept 2006 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dear all,
Out of the 683 novels of the "rentrée littéraire", we had the hard task of bringing you just a limited selection. Eight of these works seemed to us particularly unusual and we’d like to share the pleasure we had in reading them with you. Here is our Autumn selection.
Let’s begin with three novels which revisit the past and might tell us something about our present. Following his La théorie des nuages, Stéphane Audeguy presents us with a second dazzling novel entitled Fils unique1. Writing in the form of an apocryphal memoir, the author re-imagines the life of François, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s elder brother, and makes him a libertine. Our monthly profile is dedicated to this highly creative writer. Patrick Rambaud highlights a little-known period of Napoleon’s life, telling us the story of how "Puss-in-Boots" (Le chat botté), the affectionate nickname by which the young general was known, became a powerful and controversial ruler. François Dupeyron evokes the life of the great painter Gustave Courbet in Le grand soir, and takes us right into the midst of turbulent nineteenth-century France.
Three other novels deal with contemporary troubles. In Marilyn, dernières séances1 a magnificent book that is both intelligent and powerful, Michel Schneider recreates the last three years of Marilyn Monroe’s life, focusing on her relationship with her psychoanalyst. François Salvaing also explores identity problems in Jourdain, in which an elderly multi-millionaire withdraws from the world in order to go to Israël and make alyah. His last act, one of unprecedented violence, is the culmination of his gradual realisation that he belongs to the nation of Israël. With Le paradis des chiots, Sami Tchak takes us into the everyday world of children in a Latin American shanty town, where absolute poverty sits alongside unbearable violence. In a narrative style that is reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the book evokes a curse that is visited on generation after generation.
Two mischievous novels turned out to be particularly seductive. In his first novel, L’homme qui marchait avec une balle dans la tête, Philippe Pollet-Villard recounts the tumultuous life of a teenage bank-robber turned general outlaw. Blending humour and seriousness, the book brings to life a whole world of intriguing, endearing and zany characters and settings. Last but not least, Agnès Desarthe’s Mangez-moi takes us into a region of Wonderland where Alice is a dreamy, warm-hearted cook, and where past pain and suffering make way for life and desire. A tale that is both delightful and profound.
We hope you will enjoy this selection of novels as much as we did and look forward to discussing it with you
With our best wishes,
Hervé Ferrage and Sophie Moreau.
1These two novels are competing for the Goncourt Prize 2006.