2023-08-09 06:58:06
► A French woman: “Colette at war. 1939-1945 »
Benedicte Vergez-Chaignon
Flammarion, 334 p., 21,90 €
At the Liberation, Brasillach and Céline were indignant that Colette was not prosecuted. Hadn’t she, like them, written in the collaborative press, Candide, Grégoire, Present, La Gerbe, Au Pilori, the journal of the militia and Nazi publications? Had she not participated in the revival of the Petit Parisien pétainiste? Hadn’t she signed books for Aryanized publishers, including Ferenczi torn from its Jewish founder and delivered to the son of the publisher of Mein Kampf, or Calmann-Lévy renamed Aux Armes de France?
The novelist of Sido, Claudine, Les Vrilles de la vigne, Chéri or Gigi emerged from this troubled period with honors, popularity at its height and the tribute of Aragon on her death at age 81 in 1954. Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon explains why after a fascinating historical investigation.
Colette concentrates all the French ambiguities of the Collaboration. Friend of the occupiers but married to a Jew, aware of the atrocities (her neighbor Suzanne Spaak was shot), but determined to survive, to publish, to protect herself and her family, she demonstrated a convenient blindness, like so many of French. In 1940, she set her course in the article “Things that do not concern women”, and will not deviate from it. No politics, but a stunning style to celebrate eternal France.
Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon, who worked with Daniel Cordier for his works on Jean Moulin and signed the Pétain biography (Perrin, 2018), never gives in to hagiography. The historian shows a great writer in her complex truth: selfish, often cowardly and sometimes brave, always a fine fly, ready for shameful compromises, but also full of panache. Colette does not grow out of it. But incredibly present, real.
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► The miraculous penguin: “The Last of His Own”
Sybille Grimbert
Editions Anne Carrière, 192 p., €19
1835: Gus, a scientist studying wildlife in northern Europe, witnesses the slaughter of a colony of great auks by Icelandic fishermen. Only one specimen escapes, which Gus retrieves to cage and observe. Feeding this injured and furious survivor is difficult. Install him at home, in Scotland, even more. But over time, a bond is woven between these two originals.
Much research leads Gus to believe that this penguin might be the last of its kind. From then on, his attachment to the animal changed in nature. A form of sadness and urgency feeds their daily lives. This great penguin is a poetic character impossible to forget. This magnificent novel, which manages to move without falling into sentimentality or anthropomorphism, received the Maurice Genevoix French Academy Prize and the 30 Million Friends Prize.
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► In the service of Her Majesty: “The Squadron of Catherine de Medici. Volume I, The Wise Girl »
Weaver’s Hand
Dargaud, 112 p., 19 €
Beautiful, noble and devoted, a squadron of young girls surrounded Catherine de Medici during the Wars of Religion. Their mission? Seduce the protagonists of both camps for the service of the Queen Mother. In this graphic novel, the first of a diptych, these young women thrown into the heart of power and violence are embodied by the character of Gabrielle with “that higher truth reached by fiction”, underlines the historian Jérémie Foa. Freed from her black legend, Catherine de Medici is rehabilitated there in her political art as a tireless negotiator.
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► The paths of defeat: “Argonne”
Stephane Emond
The Round Table, 128 pages, €16
June 1940: life changed for the family of the author, Stéphane Émond. Launched on the paths of exodus, here are the elders, with wives and children, leaving their native land, in Argonne: “They walk until nightfall, joining thousands of floating shadows, exhausted silhouettes, like an army of routed civilians. »
A few days later, it will be necessary to resume the journey in reverse. But not everyone will return. Crossing Dawn and space, the author seeks the tiny traces of the past: “I travel to the scene of the tragedy, trying to reconstruct its itinerary, the circumstances, the exactness. » A vibrant tribute written with a precise, sensitive, grateful pen.
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► Guyanese destinies: “Guianas”
Jean-Paul Delfino
Ed. Héloïse d’Ormesson, 592 pages, €23
1872: Clara, a young communard, is sent to prison in Cayenne. At the same time, Mané, a Brazilian slave, fled his master’s plantation, boarded a tub and headed north along the coast. As for Alphonse, a ruined and indolent aristocrat, he arrives in the new world with the intention of making his fortune.
These three emblematic destinies will intersect in Guyana and compose a flamboyant fresco where love, cruelty, adventure, desire, hope, make every page vibrate. Great romance that reads like an Alexandre Dumas and teaches us many details about this still so mysterious French territory.
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► Obviously: “France Gall, the integral”
Norman Barreau-Gely
EPA, 256 p., €35
Rigorous work and declaration of love from a fan, this beautiful book stands out as the reference biography of France Gall, five years after her death. All his record covers (250!) illuminated by the words of the unforgettable interpreter of Starmania show how far we’ve come. From her beginnings with “Poupée de wax, Poupee de son” instrumentalized by Gainsbourg, her break with Claude François, jealous of her success, until her peak with Évidemment and Michel Berger, the destiny of a free, sensitive woman was written. , generous. A star who never gave in to fashions, had Laurent Voulzy and Jean-Jacques Goldman as backup singers, and threw her whole heart into the song Babacar.
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