Fabrice Caro, Marielle Macé, Nedjma, Jean-François Sirinelli… Brief reviews of the literary season

2023-08-31 22:00:11

Five novels, a story, an anthology, history, philosophy… Here are the brief reviews of eleven notable works of the literary season in this thirty-fifth week of the year.

Anthology. “Scelerati. Ancient, sadistic and diabolical »

“Evil apparitions have been a drug for writers from the very beginning”notes Daniel Mendelsohn in the interview that opens this anthology devoted to the figures of ” bad guys “ in ancient literature and philosophy, where Aristotle, Cicero, Aeschylus, Galen, Homer, Juvenal, Lucan, Martial, Plutarch or Xenophon seem to contrive to prove the author of the missing (Flammarion, 2007). As summarized by the designer of the volume, Caroline Petit, “murderers, bloodthirsty gods, child molesters, cruel tyrants, debauched emperors” abound in these texts, and their saraband offers an exciting opportunity to explore “the ancient perception of crime and fault”but also the fascination they provoke, today as in the past. Fl. Go

“Scelerati. Antiques, sadists and diabolical”, anthology by Caroline Petit, preceded by an interview with Daniel Mendelsohn, Les Belles Lettres, “Signets”, 226 p., €15.50, digital €11.

Novel. “The Source of Ghosts”, by Yamina Benahmed Daho

In writing as white as possible, Yamina Benahmed Daho recounts a Vendée youth that could be her own, but she evokes it in a mode sufficiently distanced to set it up as a sociological tableau. In the housing estate where the parents of the narrator settled, at the end of the 1970s, nine modest families rub shoulders who are accessing property for the first time. Born “in or on the ruins of the wars of 39-45, 46-54, 54-62”the inhabitants of this district seem “relieved to put down roots in a pavilion (…)happy to live in a place, definitely”. Even if the house is built “on buried memories”. The Source of Ghosts modestly inscribes the trajectory of a family of harkis in that of France in the 1980s and 1990s. And writes not the legend, but the history. Fl. By

“The Source of Ghosts”, by Yamina Benahmed Daho, Gallimard, “L’Arbalète”, 144 p., €18, digital €13.

Novel. “How to Love Your Daughter” by Hila Blum

In a town in the Netherlands, far from her home in Israel, Yoella meets her two granddaughters by secretly observing them from the road, through the bay window of their house. His only daughter, Léa, the children’s mother, left the family home years earlier without explanation. For what ? Hila Blum proposes a long journey through motherhood in how to love your daughter, the first novel that delicately digs into the flaws of a happy home. From the unconditional love of the baby’s first days to the distance that widens during adolescence, the narrator reconstructs the string of feelings that animated her at each stage of her child’s life, until revealing what has become part of its history. Maternal protection is also a formidable trap that the novelist retraces in fragments, until the final explosions. Hila Blum manages, through this skilful construction and restrained writing, to compose a work full of nuances on the mistakes that can be made in the name of love. The story alternates between the investigation carried out by Yoella on social networks to find out about the life of adult Léa and the story of a family life. Exploring the misunderstandings between generations, this powerful novel ends up taking its reader by surprise: behind the hollow portrait of an ungrateful daughter emerges that of a devouring mother. Ar. S.

You have 71.38% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.