2023-11-01 10:01:59
►The fierce age
Anger and Envy,
Alice Renard,
Héloïse d’Ormesson, 160 p., €18
« Camillio thinks Isor is stupid. Doctors at the time thought she was crippled. I think she understands the essential, and only the essential. » This is how Isor’s mother evokes her daughter, the fierce heroine of this impressive first novel. At 13, the age at which the first pages of the book pick her up, Isor does not speak, does not write, but sometimes explodes in fits of anger.
To summarize the book further would already say too much. Anger and Envyis a totally gripping multi-voice story about the birth, rebirth and blossoming of an individuality, as well as a striking variation on parental love. Its author, Alice Renard, is only 21 years old, but has a stunning style.
►The honor of the assassin
The dice,
Ahmet Altan,
Actes Sud, 208 p. €21.8
A cardinal principle guides young Ziya: honor. His own, that of his family and that of his people of the Caucasus, the Circassians. It will lead him to kill his older brother’s assassin in court in Istanbul at the beginning of the 20th century, the capital of a crumbling Ottoman empire where thugs and “thugs” reign. pashas with silver laminated epaulettes ».
A vengeful murder which reveals to Ziya his destiny as an assassin and, after a stop in prison, another in Egypt and the meeting of an unforgettable love, earns him an incomparable mission: to kill the grand vizier… In a story as sharp as the blade of a saber, the Turk Ahmet Altan delivers here the dense portrait of an ambiguous hero, both chivalrous and prisoner of his identity.
►A Viennese café
The Nameless Café,
Robert Seethaler, translated from German (Austria) by Élisabeth Landes and Herbert Wolf,
Sabine Wespieser publisher, 246 p., €23
End of summer 1966. In a working-class district of Vienna, Robert Simon, a peaceful and modest thirty-year-old, takes over an abandoned café and manages, through hard work and attention to others, to make it a comforting place where people meet. simple people over a beer.
With captivating charm and delicate musicality, Robert Seethaler invites us to sit next to the boss and his luminous waitress, Mila, but also to the customers, a little battered, even slightly offbeat. Sometimes funny, often sad, this story, as deep as it is graceful, spreads its magic. very slowly, without making any noise ».
►Letter to Pia
Madness Hotel,
David Le Bailly,
Threshold, 208 p., €18.50
On December 7, 1987, Pià Nerina threw herself out of the 6th floor window of her Parisian apartment in front of her 10-year-old grandson. Thirty years later, David Le Bailly took up his pen to “let the disappearance be finally recorded”of his grandmother. He recounts his childhood spent in a closed family circle with a psychologically unstable mother, maddeningly ” banal » et « contagious “, who, all his life, will have violated his only son and his mother, “ intertwined snakes spitting their venom until they die ».
A damaged childhood, certainly, but nevertheless carrying around its share of consolation: the local deli, the nice gentleman from the tobacco shop, the bistro where we gathered while waiting for the mother to finish her tantrums. In the form of a long letter to his grandmother, the author creates a sensitive book on the quest for family secrets.
►The Wretched of the Sea
Shipwreck,
Vincent Delecroix,
Gallimard, 138 p., 17,50 €
« Every day I have before my eyes all the misery of the world which comes pouring out here. » The naval officer responsible for regulating traffic in the North Sea has already initiated assistance for the rafts of immigrants in distress. Why didn’t she do anything that night? In this moving monologue, she recounts how she fell into the inhuman, abandoning twenty-seven migrants to drown. “ It’s not that I don’t know what to think: it’s that I simply don’t think anything. »
This resignation results from this specific shipwreck, but perhaps also the shipwreck of a society which is no longer able to help the damned of the sea. Vincent Delecroix’s novel is written in straight line, based on a real event. A tribute to “ a whole people of drowned people ».
►His ancestors!
Washed Memory,
Nathacha Appanah,
Mercury of France, 160 p., €17.50
One day in 1872, the great-great-grandparents of Nathacha Appanah left India, crossed an ocean, to land in Mauritius and work on a plantation there. They were part of the coolies, these men and women hired by landowners to replace the black labor force freed by the abolition of slavery.
It is to remember her ancestors and their humble courage, to cultivate what she owes them and pass it on in turn, that the author signs this beautiful, tender book, sculpted in the twists and turns of family memory, her memories and its silences. “ I write about my grandparents and my parents and my childhood. » A tribute to migrants and migrations, crafted in superb language.
►Meeting in Douala
A way of loving,
Dominique Barbéris,
Gallimard, 209 p., 19,50 €
1958, Douala, Cameroon. The small French society lives in isolation in what we still call the colonies. Madeleine, the narrator’s aunt, followed her husband Guy there. The abandoned wife has the air of a shy provincial; this is perhaps what attracts Yves Prigent, a smooth talker and seducer.
« Like all exile environments where people live on top of each other, it was a place of intrigue. (…) We hung out, we dined at each other’s houses, we spied on each other. » Courted, Madeleine kills time with a certain nonchalance, while the hour of decolonization soon rings. Dominique Barbéris signs a delicate novel, with an old-fashioned feel, which reveals the emotions of a woman and the mystery of an elusive encounter. A work which has just received the grand novel prize of the French Academy.
►A man of size
Watch over her,
Jean-Baptiste Andrea,
The Iconoclast, 580 p., €22.50
At the dawn of his death, Michelangelo Vitaliani, nicknamed Mimo, looks back on his 82 years of life. Born in 1904, this famous sculptor spent much of the 20th century in poor Italy, against the backdrop of the two world wars and the rise of fascism. An era that was not nuanced » : « we were rich or poor, dead or alive ».
In his fourth work, Jean-Baptiste Andrea once again impresses with his romantic power. He continues his reflection on art, recounts with great mastery the friendship between two beings who are completely opposed, and questions the end of childhood (“ So that was what growing up was like? Earn money, improve yourself a little if you could do that? »)
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