Clémence Boulouque
NUIT OUVERTE
244pp. Flammarion. 18euros.
978 2 08 120214 6
Vincent Delecroix
LA CHAUSSURE SUR LE TOIT
217pp. Gallimard. 16euros.
978 2 07 078155 3
Louise Desbrusses
COURONNES, BOUCLIERS, ARMURES
178pp. P.O.L. 16euros.
978 2 84682 184 1
Éric Reinhardt
CENDRILLON
577pp. Stock. 24euros.
978 2 23 405814 9
Olivia Rosenthal
ON N’EST PAS LÀ POUR
DISPARAÎTRE
215pp. Verticales. 16.50euros.
978 2 07 078531 5
This year in France, the “rentrée littéraire” – the publishing equivalent of
going back to school – is bigger than ever; some 727 literary novels have
been published since August. The rentrée is a peculiarly French phenomenon
which turns on the fact that the big literary prizes (Goncourt, Renaudot,
Interallié, Femina, Académie Française, Médicis) are awarded between October
and November. Of this year’s novels, 234 are translations from another
language, mostly English or, to be precise, American. This is an astonishing
figure, especially when compared with the small number of translated works
published in Britain, but it still leaves nearly 500 French novels to choose
from.
The problem with this tidal wave of new novels has been that only the most
powerful publishing houses and the biggest names are heard; the few French
writers who are known in the United States or the United Kingdom – Michel
Houellebecq, Amélie Nothomb, Marie Darrieussecq – are the stars of the
French scene as well. And yet the rentrée does ensure that literature
remains at the heart of French cultural life; it is discussed and dissected
at length in the press and on radio and television. It may take only two
hours by train from London, but Paris is still a world away.
Nor is Paris the only city in France to take its literature seriously; Lyon
has a thriving cultural life and its literary interests are concentrated at
the Villa Gillet, a beautiful hôtel particulier overlooking the city, which
hosts readings, debates and events. Last month five novelists brought their
new books to the Villa Gillet to give readings and talk about their work to
audiences of several hundred. These are not first-time novelists but they
are not yet fully established – the old new wave, perhaps. The director of
the Villa Gillet, Guy Walter, chose well; all five have been nominated for a
prize.
Nuit ouverte, by Clémence Boulouque, tells two stories at once; that of the
first woman ever to be made a rabbi, Regina Jonas, who was murdered at
Auschwitz in 1944, and that of the (fictional) actress Elise Lermont, who is
preparing to portray Jonas in a film. Gripped by Jonas’s story, Lermont
learns of her own family’s collaboration with the Vichy regime in the Second
World War and struggles to reconcile her growing awareness of the horrors
that took place with the heroism that defied them. Lermont’s story, told in
the first person, takes the form of a diary, a confession and a testimony.
When she says “J’ai besoin de toi”, it is not clear who she is addressing;
does she need a reader to bear witness? The two main characters in Nuit
ouverte remain shadowy and opaque, but Lermont’s grandmother, a vain,
selfish woman happy to enjoy the delights of Occupied Paris, is vividly
drawn. The novel poses fundamental questions about horror, guilt and
remembrance that it does not (or cannot) answer, but it may be enough that
they are again brought to our attention.
Vincent Delecroix’s remarkable La Chaussure sur le toit is a more playful
affair; the central subject of each of the book’s ten chapters is, indeed, a
discarded shoe. Each chapter tells a different story of how the shoe came to
be on the roof of an apartment block in Paris near the Gare du Nord, a
“quartier populaire” – a polite name for a poor and undesirable
neighbourhood. Those interested in the shoe include a young girl who cannot
sleep, a jealous lover, a lonely old lady, a dog and a conceptual artist.
The fifth chapter, “L’élément tragique”, re-enacts Sophocles’ Philoctetes on
the roof, with small-time crooks as Philoctetes, Ulysses and Neoptolemus.
Despite its title, this is one of the lightest and wittiest episodes in the
book, though Delecroix does finish on a downbeat note. Each chapter is told
in the first person by a resident of the building and each voice, even the
dog’s, has its own character and dignity.
For all the jokes and conceits, most of the stories here deal with loneliness.
The last chapter, presented as the one which explains how the shoe arrived
on the roof, is narrated by an angelic figure who wants to bear the weight
of the city’s unhappiness, who wants everyone to know that they could:
inventer toutes les histoires qu’ils voudraient à fin de se divertir de leur
solitude, afin de se convaincre – au moins pour un temps . . . qu’ils
n’étaient pas si seuls, afin qu’au moins, dans ces histoires, ils puissent
en parler.
(invent all the stories they like to distract themselves from their
loneliness, to convince themselves – at least for a while . . . that they
weren’t so alone, to be able at least, in these stories, to talk about it)
Louise Desbrusses’s novel Couronnes, boucliers, armures (approximately,
“crowns, shields, armour”) is quite unlike all the other novels discussed
here, and untypical of the rentrée in general. It tells the story of two
sisters, L’Aînée and La Seconde (the elder and the younger, or the first and
the second), and their relationship with their mother (referred to
throughout as Mère) within the wider family circle. No names are given, so
although we know that the sisters have unusual names, given by Mère to
distinguish them from the common crowd, there is no clue as to what they
are. We know that Mère is foreign and from a lower class than her husband,
hence the contempt she is held in by her husband’s family and her frantic
need to establish superiority through her daughters. The novel is structured
round three main episodes (“couronnes”, “boucliers” and “armures”) during
the course of a large family celebration. The narrative voice hovers around
the two sisters and captures their thoughts; the language is richly worked
and dense. Desbrusses inverts word order and uses repetition and rhyme,
which gives the text an almost poetic quality. The claustrophobic, hostile
nature of the family’s obsessions and prejudices is revealed little by
little, and the story concentrates on whether the younger daughter will be
able to break away from Mère and her sister. Each section is preceded by a
short, unpunctuated paragraph which seems to begin and end in the middle of
a phrase; these passages set the scene, physically and emotionally, for the
drama about to unfold. This kind of writing makes great demands on the
reader but Desbrusses knows when to stop, and there is not a word out of
place. Another impressive feature of Couronnes, boucliers, armures is that,
despite its impressionistic experimentation, the narrative is well paced and
manages to wrong-foot the reader.
Éric Reinhardt’s Cendrillon (Cinderella) could not be more different; a
florid, autobiographical work that sweeps all before it with energy and
humour. Reinhardt’s novel tells the story of four men, one of whom is the
novelist Éric Reinhardt; each man has a troubled relationship with his
father and suffers from feelings of inadequacy and fear in adolescence.
After similar beginnings, the four go on to lead very different lives; one
becomes a pathetic, murderous loner, one a faceless geologist obsessed with
watching his wife have sex with other men; another a hedge-fund manager
heading for disaster; the fourth, and most interesting, is Reinhardt
himself. In case we were in any doubt, the narrator calls the three other
men “mes avatars synthético-théoriques”, and the blurb on the back of
the book asks simply “Que serais-je devenu si je n’avais pas rencontré
Margot à vingt-trois ans?”. So Cendrillon is “There but for the grace of God
go I” writ large, a kind of summing up of Reinhardt's many and varied
obsessions: Cinderella, Monteverdi, the autumn, high finance, the
Palais-Royal, the arch of a foot, his love for his wife, Margot, the moral
turpitude of the Parisian left-wing bourgeoisie and reviewers who fail to
see the genius of his work. With its extreme, obsessional men, darting off
at tangents and constantly hungering after women, Cendrillon feels more
American than French, reminiscent of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, transposed
to a minutely observed Paris. The structure seems chaotic but it is tightly
controlled. At one point Reinhardt takes the reader to London to learn about
futures trading from a hedge-fund manager. He describes the visit in
extremely funny detail; only later do we realize that one of his avatars
will end up doing the same job. Cendrillon is a tour de force, by turns
exuberant, infuriating and unexpected.
On n’est pas là pour disparaître, by Olivia Rosenthal, also features its
author – or at least, a thirty-nine-year-old writer called Olivia Rosenthal
who lives in Paris – but she emerges only slowly, after two other characters
have been introduced: Monsieur T, who has attacked his wife in a demented
rage brought on by Alzheimer’s, and Dr Alzheimer himself. The novel is an
exploration of the disease, of the conflicting emotions it provokes and,
most remarkably, an account of the mental journey undergone by Monsieur T so
that we feel, in some way, able to understand why he felt driven to kill his
wife. Rosenthal treats this as a serious subject, but she is able to mock
her own assumptions and misgivings. She addresses us directly and gives us
mental exercises to do while reading the novel:
Faites un exercice.
maginez que vieux et malade, vous soyez placé dans une maison de retraite,
que personne ne vienne jamais vous voir, ceux ou celles qui auraient pu vous
rendre visite étant déjà morts et enterrés.
Je vous l’accorde, l’exercice n’est pas fameux.
(Do an exercise.
Imagine that, old and ill, you are put in a retirement home and that no one
ever comes to see you, those who might have come to visit being already dead
and buried.
I grant you, the exercise is not much fun.)
Rosenthal’s own story unfolds as Monsieur T declines, and we learn about her
own family tragedy as another is being acted out, as it were, alongside.
Events happen in fits and starts; the fragmented, disjointed narrative moves
from the cool, intelligent voice of Olivia Rosenthal to Monsieur T’s
bewildered incoherence to Madame T’s resentment, full of love and loyalty.
It may seem unlikely, but this story about Alzheimer’s is life-affirming as
well as terrifying.
Although they are very different, these novels do share common concerns; the
influence of autofiction is strongly felt in three out of the five; four
mention Paris and two are steeped in it; three address the reader directly.
Stylistically, they are ambitious and that ambition is for the most part
realized; these writers are not afraid to take risks with either form or
content and, as a result, their work is always challenging, from the
polished cadences of Louise Desbrusses’s dysfunctional family to the
delirious foul-mouthed rants of Éric Reinhardt’s avatars. It would seem, on
this showing at least, that contemporary French fiction is very much
concerned with itself, with its capital city, and with its audience; most
importantly, it is in good hands.
Lucy Dallas is the editor of the TLS website and In Brief pages.
