“The suspense finally ended a little before 1 p.m.”, tells the Swiss daily Time. And the news quickly made the rounds of French-speaking press sites in Belgium and Switzerland. On November 3, the Goncourt Prize was awarded to Brigitte Giraud for her book live fast, published by Flammarion. “Six years after Leïla Slimani, awarded in 2016 for Soft song, [elle devient] the thirteenth woman (only) to appear on the list of the most prestigious of French literary prizes”, comment The Free Belgium.
The other three finalists were Giuliano da Empoli for The Mage of the Kremlin (Gallimard editions), Cloé Korman for Almost Sisters (Threshold) and Makenzy Orcel for A human sum (Shores).
This is not a mourning book
“Lyonnaise native of Algeria”, Brigitte Gerbaud had so far “a certain experience in literature, but little notoriety among the general public. And she got on very well with it.” emphasize again La Libre Belgique.
live fast is a “attempt to exhaust a personal drama”, as defined by the Swiss daily Time when the book is published. Brigitte Giraud returns to the spiral of events that led to the death of her husband, Claude, in a motorcycle accident in 1999, when they were about to move into a new house. She recounts the litany of ifs to imagine what could have happened if it had rained that day, if the couple had not had the keys to the new house earlier than expected, if Stephen King, of whom Claude was great reader, had succumbed to the serious accident he had had three days earlier. Would Claude have taken fewer risks?
In this exercise, “Language is her ally, since it allows her to make Claude’s presence by her side last. And grammar is her accomplice, since it is thanks to the conditional that she can imagine a life where the accident could have been avoided”. comment La Libre Belgique.
“’Live Fast’ is not a book of mourning. It is a miraculous and luminous uchronia that wants to twist reality as only literature allows.”
“The Prix Goncourt is the most prescriptive French literary prize with readers. The media spotlight multiplies sales by 3, even by 10”, recalls for his part Time. “The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier, Goncourt Prize 2020has sold more than a million copies and The most secret memory of men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Prix Goncourt 2021, 550,000 copies.”