2023-08-05 14:28:00
“Little Praise of the Transat” by Vanessa Postec
Vanessa Postec, “Parisienne exiled in a deckchair”, who became a bookseller in the Tarn after a career in the press and publishing, takes a place which, on the philosophy side, was not occupied by anyone. “Search well. No trace in Plato, in Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty or his friend Sartre. Search again. Not the slightest trace in Kant or Alain. This leaves him full freedom to bush at leisure, passing through literature, cinema, comics or painting: here is a text in love with the folding canvas deck chair (or “transat”, for transatlantic, the birth of the object as we know it being linked with the appearance of passenger liner travel), a relaxed symbol, “green in essence” and ultimately more “subversive” than we imagine. Because settling into a deckchair and not moving from it in the summer is for the author to make fun of productivity, to sit on “work more to earn more” and refuse “to consume, to to participate, to pollute, to (con) run”. His Little Praise version 2023 (published ten years earlier by François Bourin, here revised and corrected) can thus be read in line with the Little Praise of Mediocrity from the same publisher – where comedian Guillaume Meurice praised the soft stomach of 10/ 20 to better decompress. It also goes very well with Grégory Le Floch’s Eloge de la plage, recently published by Rivages. Glacier optional. T.St.
A little praise for Vanessa Postec’s deckchair. Les Pérégrines, 184 pp., €12.50 (e-book: €6.99).
“Bradley to Bradley” by Connor Willumsen
It makes no sense. A tall, bald, brakeman-style guy with oversized sunglasses is running around nonstop. Beneath his sneakers, the desert sand of Las Vegas. On his Toy Story flocked tank top, vomit. “If you ask me, this man is totally stoned and having a blast.” This runner is Murray. Unless he’s Bradley, an Oscar-winning actor for his role in a Lance Armstrong biopic. This is the pretext for a smooth speech, disgusting with a hypocritical modesty, politically correct leaving no one on the floor. “I’ve been through ups and downs since I was little, because I’ve never wanted anything else in life but to be able to share, even for a moment, a bit of magic that I knew I had in me.” That of Connor Willumsen, born in 1986, is the irony. From this critical gaze on the absurdity of our habits, he draws our doubts, our absences with a fine and trembling line. The black and white exudes Bradley’s loneliness (or is it Murray’s?) and the penciled shadows, a mystery. Is it possible to shed light on his identity? “It’s also a pure matter of luck, to be where you need to be when you need to have the opportunity to build something from scratch. It drives me crazy to know that I will never be truly satisfied, no matter what I do.” CG-D.
Bradley to Bradley by Connor Willumsen. Translated from English (Canada) by Martin Richet. Çà et là, 80 pp., €20.
«Humus» by Raul Brandão
Published in 1917, Humus by Raul Brandão (1867-1930) is a classic of Portuguese literature. And we could compare it to the Intranquillity of Pessoa, recalls in the preface Françoise Laye, the translator. “But if Pessoa abandons himself, in fact, with delight, to the infinite exploration of a self of unusual richness […], Raul Brandão, he leans with exceptional generosity, sensitivity on the misery of the human condition, the pain and the irremediable absurdity to which we are condemned. Humus is certainly not a recreational book, even if the satire is permanent, but a long metaphysical development. The narrator, an old man, keeps his diary: he buries God, then finds him, fights against his conscience and above all he looks around him. The environment is not pleasant: a small town in the north of Portugal. It’s raining, and a dozen old women, each more horrible than the other, frozen like “museum characters still sitting in the same living room” are playing table games, tric-trac and piquet. December 10: “Life is made up of all these futilities, and it is on them that I throw myself in despair. Life is nothing – it is this color, this nuance, this very misfortune. It is tenderness and nostalgia. She is everything. Both my dead and my living. I regret everything, even the ugliness. The considerations of the diarist whip the blood, the language is of a morbid beauty. FF
Humus by Raul Brandão. Translated from Portuguese by Françoise Laye. Chandeigne, 260 pages, €22.
“Chef-d’œuvre” by Juan Tallón
“Thirty-eight thousand kilos of steel volatilized. It was crazy.” In October 2005, those responsible for the Reina Sofía in Madrid realize that Equal-Parallel/Guernica-Bengasi, a 38-ton sculpture by the great sculptor Richard Serra, has disappeared without a trace. It had been inaugurated in 1986, then relegated to a warehouse in Arganda del Rey and forgotten for years after the storage company went bankrupt in 1995. From this true and incredible story, Juan Tallón has drawn a gripping choral novel, between fiction and non-fiction, made up of testimonies that stretch over several years (a museum room guard, the director, the examining magistrate, an inspector from the heritage brigade, Richard Serra himself…), a meticulous investigation with all those who had close or distant dealings with this event.
Was the work stolen by a collector, buried on site or recovered by scrap metal dealers? Richard Serra to whom we have just learned the news: “It’s amusing, he says, caustic, a cap of the Metropolitan pushed down on the head. Maybe the next time we go to Spain and take a taxi, we will be driving at full speed on a highway whose pavement will have been renovated with a mixture of the steel of the sculpture. Ironically, the centuries-old family business responsible for storing the monster has closed due to the Ministry of Culture defaulting on more than 10 million pesetas. F.Rl
Masterpiece by Juan Tallon. Translated from Spanish by Anne Plantagenet. Le Bruit du monde, 344 pp., €23 (e-book: €15.99).
“Precipice” by Céline Denjean
One evening when he has to deliver an errand to a regular customer who lives alone in the middle of a wood, a young pizza delivery man discovers a terrible sight. The quadra is swaddled in one of those latex suits used for SM games, her mouth gagged from the inside by a ball of soft material that sticks to the mucous membranes, immobilized by straps in a bathtub whose tap is running. The level of the bath reddened by blood has just reached the lips, within seconds the client was dead. Before leaving, the young boy spots on the white tiles an acronym drawn with a black spray: MPC/1.
Major Louise Caumont, of the Tarbes Research Brigade, is the victim of the case. Accompanied by her assistant and friend Violaine, she closely studies the profile of the victim. And this is not trivial. Valériane Ducuing is a loner who maintains distended relations with her family, she worked as a forensic doctor before leaving everything to come and lock herself in this family home where she lives with her dog. She is not known to be a friend or lover, she has a rather gothic profile, dressed in black and haunted by death. And no matter how hard she tries, she doesn’t see who can blame her for wanting to inflict such torture on her…
If you have a weekend stretching ahead of you, empty of work, children, love or other things, this thriller is perfect. Lean into an armchair or a hammock, in your bed or on the sand, and attack the beast (some 500 pages)! AS
Precipice by Céline Denjean. Michel Lafon, 496 pages, €20.95.
“Blood Rocks” by Olivier Bal
1993, in the Corsican maquis, a man on the run, wounded, escapes in extremis from his pursuers. But his brother Theo is still at their mercy. We must rescue him. So, after a last look at the panorama of light and stone that surrounds him, in the heart of this island that he loved so much, so hated, before swooping down on his enemies armed with his only knife, Ange has an ultimate thought: it’s a good day to die…
Of our time. In the ultra-secure apartment of a tower in London, a Serbian billionaire, big boss of the international mafia is found murdered. In letters of blood on a bay window, these few words “Ché la mia ferita sia murtale”. May my wound be mortal. In the penthouse full of works of art, only one showcase was emptied, it contained a simple knife…
Marie Jansen, the Europol inspector who was about to bring down the tycoon, will she be able to connect these two stories? What are the connections between the mysteries of the international underworld, child trafficking and yacht robberies in Corsica more than thirty years ago? Who is the murderer determined to dispense justice instead of the police? And why is she, herself, so troubled by this affair… Olivier Bal’s latest novel (we enjoyed his previous thriller Beware of Angels last summer) Blood Rocks is a superb twilight western. A strong and tragic book intertwining two stories. Past and present. Which inexorably come together. FD
Blood Rocks by Olivier Bal. XO editions, 476 pp., €21.90.
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