2023-04-15 23:49:00
Romans
Sylvie Wojcik, Heather McFerguson’s last wishes
Arléa, 144 pp., €17.
A son of Parisian antique dealers, a bookseller after having been an archivist, which is to say what his world is, is contacted by a notary from Inverness (Scotland). Heather McFerguson bequeaths her house in Applecross to him. Alois – «Al what ?» – has no idea who this lady might be. He goes there, questions the people of the village, takes possession of the places (the house, the pub), the landscapes and the sounds (the bell of the tides), makes friends. “Chance gave birth to him in Paris and, as the wind did not push him further, he stayed there. Until the letter from Inverness. Today, something inexplicable, deeper even than the desire to solve the mystery, keeps him on this Scottish land. The same kind of charm works on reading. Naturally, it will be a question of how his old copy of the Lord of the Rings connects Alois to Heather, but the theme of the novel – Sylvie Wojcik’s third – revolves around appeasement. It’s communicative. Cl.D.
Celine Zufferey, Nitrate
Gallimard, 253 pp., 19,50 € (ebook : 13,99 €).
At her editing table, Constance manipulates time and space. Editor, the young woman seeks with the rushes to trace a story. When she activates a camera, it’s at home before going out and after checking that no lights are on, no taps or windows open. She also makes sure that the doors are closed several times. “The more she starts over, the less sure she is. She wants to hate those who do not doubt. This sweet obsession, passionate about the personality of Alice Guy (1873-1968), the first woman director, nevertheless scours archives and dusty places in search of a particular film, Snowball fight. Nitrate is the material of film from the beginning of the 20th century, highly flammable, to become “monstrous”. Nitrate is a captivating investigation, one thing leads to another, from flashes of film history to contemporary places in his memory, with Alice Guy and a determined Constance as heroines. This manages to bring out a past, one of the strongest passages of the book confronts her with a distant descendant of the showman Ernest Grenier, with the piling up of pieces of merry-go-rounds and stands from his electric theater in a storage box… where she precisely dreams of finding the needle… The second novel by Céline Zufferey after save the furniture (2017), sublime with sensitivity the destiny of Alice Guy, with a fragile and creative character quite unforgettable. F.Rl
Camille Islert, A three legged cat
Grasset, 240 pp., €20.90 (ebook: €15).
“Fierce guardian of her experience, she taught her daughter nothing of the essentials.” This is about Marianne. She is going to die soon, in the hospital, and the fact that she is living her last hours does not trigger the tenderness of her daughter, Eva. A three legged cat is a first novel about the lame journeys, the initiations, the blindness, the clumsiness of each other. Eva is only 30 years old but she collects her memories as if she were 1,000 years old, prompted to do so by the impending disappearance of her mother. There are lovely passages about the discovery of desire and pleasure, about the rivalry between a brother and a sister, the autonomy that a young adult tears away and develops. There are also clichés about men and their behavior with women. Fortunately Eva realizes that she is not just a victim: “She could have just said she was afraid of people, everywhere, all the time, not just men, not harassment, danger, but people in general. […]» V.B.-L.
Katie Kitamura, Intimacies
Translated from English (United States) by Céline Leroy. Stock “La cosmopolite”, 253 pp., €20.90 (ebook: €14.99).
A young woman arrives from New York to work at the International Criminal Court in The Hague as an interpreter. New town, new friends, new lover, new job. All the senses on the alert, she observes and notes the facts almost administratively as if to push back analysis and withdrawal into oneself, the intruder. Gradually a sort of strangeness and insecurity set in. The boundaries between the known, the re-known and the unknown are blurred. Between vaguely familiar and completely foreign, there is little room left for the intimate and the meaning is lost, as in a lighter version ofSword but Ferenc Karinthy. “To interpret is to be occupied by another voice”, says Katie Kitamura in an interview. Occupied as invaded? And if our voice is no longer entirely ours, that the limits become porous in everything, at what moment are we ourselves within our blurred intimacies? N.A.
stories
Marisol Drouin, twin twin
La Peuplade, 96 pp., €17 (ebook: €12.99).
As children, they were nevertheless close to each other. Wearing their rain boots, they headed for the fields of Baie-Saint-Paul to pick up injured animals. And treat them with their doctor father. But as an adult “a distance had gradually crept in” between them. The causes ? “Work. Family” or even illness. One has a tumor lodged in the heart of his brain, the other in his breast. In a jerky and lively writing, Marisol Drouin confesses. lock up her brother and their cancer in this autofiction is for her a way of controlling – of having the pleasure of starting over and remembering – in the face of fear. She doesn’t know it yet: “sickness is not death. She is still life. A life affected. Desire only ignites in the invention of death, in its immediate threat. He does not survive the long time of the disease. C.G.D.
douna Loup, Boris, 1985
Zoé, 160 pp., €17 (ebook: €10.99).
In the midst of the dictatorship, in January 1985, the great-uncle of the novelist Douna Loup disappeared in Chile at the age of 44. His backpack was found near a river. Boris Weisfeiler used to trek alone. He had gone to Alaska in extreme conditions shortly before. Travel notes included in his great-niece’s account recount this stay in June 1984. Boris Weisfeiler – his face is reproduced on the cover of the book, he looks the job – lives in cabins, meets a bear who threatens him. He writes : “This area is therefore frequented by large predators, and I decided to think about the strategies to adopt, just in case”. Six months later what hostile beings could have encountered Uncle Boris? Douna Loup recounts with sensitivity the investigations she carried out, following her great-aunt Olga, in the United States and Chile. Little by little the portrait of a brilliant and secretive man emerges. He was born into a Jewish family in the Soviet Union, had emigrated to the United States, was a mathematician. The investigator follows different leads, thinks she is close to the truth but in vain when she meets a former police officer who, she feels, is lying. Over the whole affair lurks the sinister shadow of Colonia, a German sect, close to the torturers of Pinochet. F.F.
Dictionary
Maxime Morin and Marguerite Hennebelle, Dictionary of Postmodern Life
Equateurs, 128 pp., 16 €.
The comic “is an eminently serious matter”. This dictionary attests to this. “of postmodern life” that anyone confused by our company can consult if necessary. B as in “Banalities” (“Pillar of living together. Example: “What did you eat for lunch? — A steak and fries. — Great””) or “Boomers” (“Always Wrong”). C like “Cinema”: «Mort. See Series.» S for “Series”, so: “Everyone is watching it.” Another definition? “Activism”: “Entertainment of the leftist electorate”. Come on, one last, in X: “The “X” sites are made absolutely inaccessible to minors thanks to a dialog box that asks them to confirm their age”. By Maxime Morin (text) and Marguerite Hennebelle (drawing), the creators of the generational and quirky Instagram account WikiHow Museum. T.St.
Biography
Danielle Michel-Chich and Therese Clerc, Antigone with white hair
New expanded edition, Des Femmes-Antoinette Fouque, 144 pp., €8.
This little book traces the eventful life of the multi-faceted life of a passionaria of the feminist movement, from the 70s (to the Movement for the freedom of abortion and contraception, Mlac, in particular) to her disappearance in 2016. She created the Maison de femmes in Montreuil and the Maison des babayagas (atypical self-managed retirement home, inaugurated in 2013). The unpublished text of her friend Danielle Michel-Chich makes her appear as one of the founders of the MeToo movement. G.D.P.
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