Island of Point Némo by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès — a crazy adventure à la Jules Verne #20BOS26
Island of Point Nemo by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès. (2014) French title : L’Ile du Point Némo.
I received Island of Point Nemo by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès last year in one of my Kube packages. It’s rather long and it took me a while to get to it. It’s hard to describe, so here’s the blurb:
A stolen diamond and three right feet, wearing shoes of a non-existent brand, that wash ashore in Scotland set into motion the first plot of Island of Point Nemo, a rollicking Jules Verne-like adventure narrative that crosses continents and oceans, involves multilingual codes, a world-famous villain, and three eccentrically loopy detectives.
Running parallel is the story of B@bil Books, an e-reader factory in France filled with its own set of colorful characters, including the impotent Dieumercie and his randy wife, who will stop at nothing—including a suspect ritual involving bees—to fix his “problem,” and their abusive boss Wang-ilWong, obsessed with carrier pigeons and spying on his employees.
With the humor of a Jasper Fforde novel, and the structure of a Haruki Murakami one, Island of Point Nemo a literary puzzle and grand testament to the power of storytelling—even in our digital age.
This book is a wild ride and you need to shed your skin of reader of the real world to go back to your child self, the one who loved listening to stories and was open to any kind of story as long as it was fascinating. Once you’re in this frame of mind, Island of Point Némo becomes a crazy adventure, a wonderful piece of literature where books are kings.
It’s crazy, poetic, humanist, philosophical, funny and stuffed with loving references to books. It is a book written by a book lover who want to recreate for adults the magic of a child’s first encounters with the sheer pleasure of adventures and stories. Books are not the boring stuff you read in school or daunting stack of pages, they’re playmates.
Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès has a luxuriant imagination and his master is Jules Verne. The blurb mentions Murakami but I don’t agree with that. Murakami’s characters are always mildly depressed. Here we are with a writer who will describe places, people, trains, cars and boats with lots of details and yet he’s never boring.
Here, the characters are as eccentric as in Jules Verne and science has a lot of space in the book. I also thought about The Pendragon Legend by Antal Szerb or War with the Newt by Karel Căpek for their exuberance, their humor and the sense of imagination of their writers.
The characters in Island of Point Némo are all unique and eccentric with incredible life stories. They are Edmond Dantes, Jean Valjean or Philéas Fogg kind of characters. They are weird, intense and yet they work. They love hard and are faithful friends. The circus characters of the book reminded me of Katherine Dunn.
The author tells us that books are powerful, safe havens, providers of joy, places of freedom where everything is possible and everyone can be a hero. They are an endless source of comfort. Island of Point Némo is erudite but not highbrow. It celebrates literature through the pleasure angle. Read to learn, to be happy, to evade from your daily life and to reconnect with the child inside you.
If you’re in the mood for an adventure peppered with literature, rush for this book. Be adventurous yourself.
In France, this novel is published by Zulma, an independant publisher. In English it is published by Open Letter Books and translated by Hannah Chute. She must have had a lot of fun translating that.
Let’s face it : this is a book I would have never read without my KUBE subscription where I receive a literary box with a book picked out for me by an independent libraire. All the books sent that way are through indie bookshops and I love my monthly blind date with a book. I especially had wonderful times with books handpicked by Aymeric, libraire in Montrouge near Paris. Thanks, Aymeric, this one is no exception.
This is also a contribution to Paris In July hosted by Emma where we focus on anything French and this is French literature. It belongs to my selection for 20 Books of Summer.
The Guillotine River by Antoine de Meaux – A DNF for Bastille Day and #ParisinJuly2026. #20BOS26
The plan was simple and good, I think: read Le Fleuve guillotine by Antoine de Meaux (2015) for Paris in July and Bastille Day. The plan was derailed when I wasn’t able to finish the book because I didn’t like it.
Le Fleuve guillotine (The Guillotine River) is set during the French Revolution in Lyon, which is the metropolis I live in. This is why I bought it in the first place, I thought it would be a good way to learn about the city during this period.
The book opens during the Insurrection of 10 August 1792 in Paris, three years after the fall of the Bastille. King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette are held prisoners at the Tuileries. Some pro-monarchy forces attempted to free them from their apartments and the revolutionary forces arrested them and sent them to the Temple prison. This will result in the abolition of monarchy and the execution of Louis XVI on January 21st, 1793.
Three men, the marquis Louis du Torbeil and his two brothers-in-law Charles and Jean de Pierrebelle are in Paris on that day, fighting on the aristocratic side to save the king from imprisonment. Charles dies in Paris during this mini civil war. They come from the Forez region, east of Lyon, near Saint-Etienne. It wasn’t clear why they were in Paris in the first place, some 450 kms from their home.
Louis and Jean go back to Lyon in a stagecoach, lying low as they don’t want to be recognized as aristocrats. Among the other travelers is Rambert Conche, a former priest who embraced revolutionary ideas and supports the most extreme political current. He’s the right arm of the violent revolutionary governor of Lyon.
Upon their arrival, Jean de Pierrebelle stays in Lyon with his former classmate Irénée Conche, Rambert’s younger brother. He’s a “soyeux lyonnais”, a silk manufacturer from Lyon. The city is famous for its silk factories on the Croix Rousse hill.
Meanwhile, the third man of the family, Barthélémy de Pierrebelle is a prêtre réfractaire –a priest who didn’t want to renounce to priesthood after religion was abolished—and he’s imprisoned in Roanne, in the Forez region.
Add to the mix a Sophie de Pale, a young mother and widow of aristocratic upbringing and you have a set of characters who represent almost all the component of the society of the time.
It’s a promising pitch, it’s set in the city I’ve grown to love and sure, it was wonderful to know exactly the places the characters go to or where their lodgings are or what the rivers look like. I was looking forward to reading this piece of history but I was bored out of my mind and couldn’t finish the book. I struggled during 150 pages and couldn’t make myself read the 300 remaining ones. In small print.
Writing historical fiction is a challenge that Antoine de Meaux didn’t win. The historical fiction author needs to do their homework and track inaccuracies while writing good fiction with the right level of historical details.
The author must fight the urge to share all the fascinating historical data they learnt during their research or they will lose non-historian-buff readers along the way. And yet, they need to include enough details to give a good sense of the time along with subtle educational details to enlighten the readers who don’t know much about this historical period.
Setting a book during the horribly complicated times of the French Revolution is a tall order.
In this case, Antoine de Meaux researched the historical facts, his writing is good and polished but he lacked a good editor to carve out useless details and push forward educational insights to his readers, either in the course of the novel or through relevant footnotes.
For example, the Insurrection in Paris lasted 45 agonizing pages where he describes the belligerents with the names of their time and the moves of the fights in Paris. I was LOST. I didn’t remember if the Suisses were Louis XVI’s personal army and the description of the forces in presence wasn’t clear enough for me. I didn’t remember much about the specific vocabulary of the French revolution and kept wondering if I understood things properly.
I couldn’t figure out the moves of the troops and where the battle happened despite going to Paris several time per year and knowing the current area around the Tuileries.
This was far too long and not necessary for the rest of the story. It should have taken 15 pages tops, it would have been enough to give the info about the main event – the king was arrested and it was a blood bath—and introduce Louis du Torbeil and Jean de Pierrebelle.
The same happened with the description of the battle in Lyon to overthrow the revolutionary local power. Again, it was too detailed and unclear. I had a hard time understanding who was fighting against whom and for what reasons. I was confused, not interested in the characters and also missing out on historical details.
When the story moved to Lyon and to Forez, the point of view alternated between the characters. They interacted but didn’t mesh. It was clear that the book was headed toward the story of Louis, Jean, his friend Irénée, Rambert the revolutionary, Bathélémy the faithful priest and Sophie the widow but I never felt invested in their fate. I felt like they were here to turn a history textbook into a novel rather than being characters who happened to live their story in the past.
After 150 pages, I just gave up. I figured I should have been caught in the story by then and since I didn’t give a damn about the characters, I stopped reading.
So, sorry, I hoped to write an enthusiastic billet about a great historical fiction book set in Lyon and I end up writing about a novel I didn’t finish. C’est la vie!
Did this ever happened to you while reading historical fiction?
It’s still Bastille Day, and Paris in July is in full force, so here’s a painting by Monet about patriotic celebrations to make it up to you. 😊 It’s June 30th, 1878. Bastille Day didn’t exist yet and the government toyed with the 30th of June (middle of the year) for a National Day before settling to July 14th and the Marseillaise.
Persian Letters by Montesquieu – for Paris in July and the 4th of July. #20BOS26 #parisinjuly2026
Persian Letters by Charles de Montesquieu. (1721) French title: Lettres persanes.
All the quotes in English come from the translation by John Davidson available on Wikisource. It sounds stiffer in English that the original French but it’s a free translation and better that what I could have done.
| Mon cher Usbek, quand je vois des hommes qui rampent sur un atome, c’est-à-dire la terre, qui n’est qu’un point de l’univers, se proposer directement pour modèle de la Providence, je ne sais comment accorder tant d’extravagance avec tant de petitesse. Lettre LIX | My dear Usbek, when I behold men, mere crawlers on this atom, the earth, which is but a point in the universe, proposing themselves as exact models for Providence, I know not how to harmonise such extravagance with such littleness. Letter 59 |
I am happy to start Paris in July, the event hosted by Emma at Words & Peace, with Persian Letters by Montesquieu, an epistolary book I should have read a long time ago.
It was SO MUCH FUN. We have two Persian travelers, Usbek and Rica, visiting France and other European countries from 1711 to 1720. In France, it is the end of the reign of Louis XIV (1638-1715) and the Regence of Louis XV (1710-1774).
Montesquieu uses them to point out the specificities of the French people, their mores, their vision of life, their social habits and their government. Usbek and Rica make faux-naïve comments about what they see and expose their views about lots of topics. They cover many concepts and realities including religion, the state of the nation, the idea of justice, slavery, racism, the place of women, war, suicide and divorce.
As the characters are rich Persians, they have a serail and quite a few letters are about home and how things are going in the serail between Usbek’s wives and the eunuchs in charge of them during their master’s absence. I have to confess these letters were of no interest to me but they contributed to give an air of authenticity to the letters.
I loved how Usbek and Rica mocked French people in general and the nobility, the king and the organization of the French elites in particular. Like here:
| La fureur de la plupart des François, c’est d’avoir de l’esprit ; et la fureur de ceux qui veulent avoir de l’esprit, c’est de faire des livres. Lettre LXVI | The passion of nearly every Frenchman is to pass for a wit; and the passion of those who wish to be thought wits, is to write books. Letter 69 |
When I see the number of memoirs “written” by politicians and celebrities nowadays, I think Montesquieu is still spot on. He doesn’t stop here with the irony:
| Le roi de France est le plus puissant prince d’Europe. Il n’a point de mines d’or comme le roi d’Espagne son voisin ; mais il a plus de richesses que lui, parce qu’il les tire de la vanité de ses sujets, plus inépuisable que les mines. Lettre XXIV | The king of France is the most powerful of European potentates. He has no mines of gold like his neighbour, the King of Spain; but he is much wealthier than that prince; because his riches are drawn from a more inexhaustible source, the vanity of his subjects. Letter 24. |
In his mind, a good citizen –even if the use of citizen is linked to the Revolution— is industrious and respectful of laws and has a family.
The aristocracy are idle, vain and useless to the country. He doesn’t go as far as saying that France should be a republic but it’s hard to think otherwise when he describes the aristocracy as fully occupied with vapid discussions, bowing down to the king and following insane Versailles etiquette to the letter.
He also criticizes the Catholic church and its wealth, its willingness to bend the rules against sums of money. He points out the hypocrisy of the whole system.
| Le pape est le chef des chrétiens. (…) Il se dit successeur d’un des premiers chrétiens, qu’on appelle saint Pierre : et c’est certainement une riche succession, car il a des trésors immenses et un grand pays sous sa domination. Lettre XXIX | The Pope is the head of the Christians (…) He declares himself to be the successor of one of the first Christians, called Saint Peter: and it is certainly a rich succession; for he possesses immense treasures, and a large territory owns his sway. Letter 29. |
The celibacy of priests and nuns also bothers him because they don’t contribute to the development of the country since they don’t get married and don’t have children.
I really approved of his vision of a good government:
| De tout ceci on doit conclure, Rhédi, que pour qu’un prince soit puissant, il faut que ses sujets vivent dans les délices ; il faut qu’il travaille à leur procurer toutes sortes de superfluités avec autant d’attention que les nécessités de la vie. Lettre CVI | From all this, one may conclude, Rhedi, that if a prince is to be powerful, it is necessary that his subjects should live in luxury; he ought to labour to procure all sorts of superfluities with as much care as the necessities of life. Letter 107. |
We should make posters of this quote and send them to political parties.
His vision of the judicial system is worth reading too. I don’t think he saw death penalty as an efficient way to prevent crime. I intend to read an abridged version of The Spirit of Law.
The place of women in society is often discussed, in comparison with the condition of the Persian women of Usbek’s serail. I can’t tag Montesquieu as feminist, it would be anachronistic, but he is very modern for his time, like here:
| C’est une autre question de savoir si la loi naturelle soumet les femmes aux hommes. Non, me disoit l’autre jour un philosophe très galant : la nature n’a jamais dicté une telle loi. L’empire que nous avons sur elles est une véritable tyrannie ; elles ne nous l’ont laissé prendre que parce qu’elles ont plus de douceur que nous, et pas conséquent, plus d’humanité et de raison. Ces avantages, qui devoient sans doute leur donner la supériorité si nous avions été raisonnables, la leur ont fait perdre, parce que nous ne le sommes point. Lettre XXXVIII | Another much-discussed question is, whether women are intended by nature to be subject to men. “No,” said a very gallant philosopher to me the other day; “nature never dictated any such law. The dominion which we exercise over them is tyrannical; they yield themselves to men only because they are more tender-hearted, and consequently more human and more rational. These advantages, which, had we been reasonable, would, without doubt, have been the cause of their subordination, because we are irrational. Letter 38 |
I agreed with a lot of his thoughts about societal topics. He thinks that divorce should be authorized because it’s not fair to force two people who don’t get along to stay together. He suggests that suicide is a private affair and shouldn’t be condemned. He implies that he doesn’t approve of slavery and the enslavement of Africans in the colonies. He’s critical of excessive greed and I was floored by this passage:
| Mais toutes les destructions ne sont pas violentes. Nous voyons plusieurs parties de la terre se lasser de fournir à la subsistance des hommes : que ne savons-nous si la terre entière n’a pas des causes générales, lentes et imperceptibles, de lassitude ? Lettre CXIII | But all destructions have not been violent. We see many parts of the earth tired out with providing subsistence for men; how do we know that the whole earth has not within itself general causes of debility, slow-working and imperceptible? Lettre 114. |
I agree with his vision of war since he says that the only acceptable wars are the ones to defend one’s people after an aggression or to help an ally in trouble. And this struck me as extremely clever:
| Je tremble qu’on ne parvienne à la fin à découvrir quelque secret qui fournisse une voie plus abrégée pour faire périr les hommes, détruire les peuples et les nations entières. Lettre CV | I dread always lest they should at last discover some secret which will furnish them with a briefer method of destroying men, by killing them off wholesale in tribes and nations. Letter 106 |
Welcome to the 20th century, my dear Montesquieu. We made them, used them and destroyed people, countries and nations.
He was so insightful. I feel very close to the ideas of the Enlightenment because they push for the best for everyone and promote the best in everyone. If you strip the book of its 18th century attributes, it’s extremely contemporary. It reminds us of the founding concepts of our democracies, ones that were a mere dream in Montesquieu’s time and that are currently joyously trampled on by far-right movements or dictators.
Montesquieu influenced the Founding Fathers in the writing of the American constitution. As Wikipedia mentions on Montesquieu’s page, He is the principal source of the theory of separation of powers, which is implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He is also known for propagating the term despotism in the modern political lexicon.
This billet is published on the 4th of July on purpose as today is the 250th anniversary of the USA. Poor Founding Fathers. I hope for them that life after death doesn’t exist and that they don’t have to contemplate today’s festivities organized by the Agent Orange and the state of the country.
Meanwhile, I wholeheartedly recommend reading Persian Letters by Montesquieu.
The Gay Pride was cancelled in Paris this week-end, I just happened to read three queer books. #20BooksofSummer
- Teleny or the Reverse of the Medal. Attributed to Oscar Wilde (1893) French title: Teleny ou le revers de la médaille.
- Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski (2020) French title: Les nageurs de la nuit. Translated by Laurent Bury.
- Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park (2019) French title: S’aimer dans la grande ville. Translated by Kyungran Chol and Pierre Bisiou.
Never pretending to be what we are not, we shall find (…) true contentedness of mind, and our bodies will be able to develop those faculties with which nature has endowed them. Not being either hypocrites or dissemblers, the dread of being seen such as we really are can never torment us. Teleny or the Reverse of the Medal.
I read three queer stories in the span of a few weeks, all about gay men in their twenties, having their first love relationship in an environment that rates from unfriendly to hostile. I haven’t read them in the order of this billet but I want to write about them in chronological order. Teleny is set Paris in the 1890s, Swimming in the Dark in Warsaw in 1980 and Love in the Big City in Seoul in the 2020s.
Sadly, these three books have common points they shouldn’t have. They all feature a narrator who relates a lost love and each time it involves shame, social pressure and the difficulty to navigate a sexual orientation that needs to remain under wraps. Relationships nipped in the bud because these young men had no gay role models, because they couldn’t be out in the open and it put a strain on their love and their daily lives. Three narrators who have lost partners who couldn’t cope with what society expected of them vs who they were and who they loved.
The first book is Teleny or the Reverse of the Medal whose author might be Oscar Wilde, on his own or with friends. I first heard of it at the British Library in London where they held an exhibition about Queer Lives in Literature from 1600-1900. I can’t imagine what Wilde would say about this book being in the British Library after all he had to endure because of his sexual orientation. The narrator of the novel is Camille des Grieux and I stand by what I wrote in my previous billet about this name for a character.
Later I checked out Teleny since Oscar Wilde probably contributed to its writing. I saw that one of the main characters is named Camille des Grieux which immediately reminded me of Manon Lescaut by l’abbé Prévost and its hero, the Chevalier des Grieux. This novel published in 1731 was controversial in its time for the indecency of the love story, was banned and became one of the most successful books in French literature. Can you imagine Wilde behind that reference? Definitely.
Teleny is the tragic love story between René Teleny, a young and gifted pianist and Camille des Grieux. It’s set in Paris where the two men live. Camille is the narrator who relates his first love to a friend, now that he’s much older.
It’s a novel of the 19th century in its tone –the fear of God and religious beliefs are embedded in the characters— and in its style. The author describes genuine love and passion between the two men, exposes the hypocrisy of social codes and questions them. With good reason. What harm do these two lovers do? Why is it forbidden? Why is it worth imprisoning someone? Camille –a unisex firstname, btw – is deliriously in love and his joy is snuffed out by the obligation to keep quiet and stay under the radar.
Teleny includes graphic MM scenes, almost a textbook for young gays, but these are not the ones that made me ill-at-ease. To me, the most shocking scene in the book is the rape of a maid and I loathed it for its violence and because it’s not frowned upon, it’s the droit du seigneur. And the author seems to tell us: what’s the matter with this world? It’s common business to rape a maid but it’s a scandal to be in love and have sex with someone of the same sex?
Teleny is a romance, a plea, a political stand against the hypocrisy of Victorian social rules and an educational book for younger gay men. It’s a literary lifeline gay teenagers.
And it’s still a sword in Warsaw in the 1980s. Ludwig has just graduated from university and now must go to a summer work camp where the Polish Communist regime sent all students after graduation. He’s gay and has a forbidden book in his suitcase, Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. An epiphany for him, a place of solace, a this-book-has-been-written-for-me moment. At camp, he meets Janusz and they fall in love and go camping by a lake in a forest. Far from prying eyes. Far from state control. A bubble of freedom in a rigid world.
Back in Warsaw, things aren’t as easy as politics get in the middle. Ludwig wants to start a PhD in Literature while Janusz gets a job where he needs to play by the Party’s rules. There are political upheavals in Poland at the time, it’s Solidarnosc times. Ludwig believe they should stand by the workers to improve the people’s lives and Janusz wants to play the game and get what he can out of it.
Ludwig wants more freedom, for common people and for himself. Janusz thinks it’s pointless and intends to exploit the regime’s cracks and live better thanks to appropriate connexions. Their
Ludwig knows he’s gay, knows that won’t change and he wants to find a way to live his love life as freely as possible, even if it means leaving the country. Janusz still thinks he can live a double life and play the game. In any case, the Polish society wouldn’t let them live together in the open, they have to pick one or the other option. I don’t think they would have been better off in a Western country. After all, in France homosexuality has been decriminalized in 1981 and a French translation of Teleny was only published in 1934 when it was written in 1893.
The political angle gives an extra-layer to the story, taking the reader to Warsaw in communist times, with its long waiting lines in front of grocery stores and the constant surveillance of the population. Ludwig and Janusz are as much in danger as Teleny and des Grieux. They might go to prison too or at least be pressured by the regime.
Swimming in the Dark is a bittersweat romance doomed from the start, reminding us of the brutality of communist regimes. It was my readalong with Séverine for June.
Now let’s move forward to the 2020s in Seoul. Our narrator is Young, a student and then young professional in Seoul. He’s gay, adrift, hiding his relationships from his mother. Although Young doesn’t face imprisonment, homosexuality is still not in the open. Since the 1980s, AIDS has reared its ugly head, a new factor in the story compared to the previous ones.
The novel is more the collection of four stories, each section dealing with a part of Young’s life. We see him as a student with his friend Jaehee (a girl), dealing with his mother’s cancer, having his first job, having a first significant relationship and then a most meaningful one.
Young relates his love with Gyuho and how it ended. Well, the same cause produces the same effect. Shame, clandestine rendezvous, no clear future as an official couple eat away the best feeling. Add AIDS to the mix and disaster is awaiting at the next corner.
When he was a teenager, his mother saw him with a boy and sent him to the psychiatric ward to become straight. No need to say it was a traumatic event in Young’s life. All his relationships implied they’d remain behind closed doors and that PDAs were not welcome. And he’s tired of this.
Sang Young Park writes beautifully about Seoul, a city he obviously loves and he describes terribly well the loneliness of his character. His sense of humor is an armor against the constant little blows of the quotidian but the reader isn’t fooled.
The underlying question of these three characters is not about sex, there are places for one-night-stands. They existed in Paris, in Warsaw and they exist in Seoul. The question that eats at them is about companionship. They crave in-the-open companionship, acceptance of their partner in their family circle, in their professional circle and among their friends. They want to stop pretending they are someone else in social settings and be their true selves in private. They want to know they are not condemned to loneliness.
I didn’t plan on writing this billet this weekend, but I just finished reading Swimming in the Dark. The Gay Pride in Paris has been postponed yesterday due to the intense heatwave we have in France at the moment, consider this billet as a remote contribution to their cause. Shame has to switch sides.
For further reading about these books :
- Here’s Lisa’s excellent review of Swimming in the Dark
- Tony read Love in the Big City and reviewed it here.
Other books on the same theme, here on the blog:
- Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (1956) set in Paris in the 1950s
- Lie With Me by Philippe Besson (2018) set in France in the 1980s
La Bonne Mère by Mathilda Di Matteo – Paris, Marseille and class-passing
La Bonne Mère by Mathilda Di Matteo (2025) Not available in English.
La bonne mère is Mathilda Di Matteo’s début novel. Set between Marseille and Paris, the title of the book is a double entendre: la Bonne Mère is the nickname that people from Marseille have given to their city’s iconic basilica, Notre Dame de la Garde, and it also means the good mother.
Clara is in her early twenties, she lives in Paris and is a student at Science Po, the French Ivy League university for political science. Clara grew up in a blue-collar family in Marseille. Her mother Véronique is a cagole, a word from Marseille to describe someone loud and flashy. The dictionary says “a tart”.
Clara is torn between two worlds, the one she comes from and the one she aspires to fit in. Her two worlds collide when she takes her boyfriend Raphaël home. She’s deeply in love with him, he comes from an aristocratic family, the kind of Parisian circles that live among themselves, with customs of their own. (cf Laure Murat’s book.)
He’s tall and lean, the exact opposite of Joseph, Clara’s father and Véronique’s husband. Véronique calls him the baby giraffe and can’t fathom what her daughter sees in him.
The novel is a two voices narration, alternating between Clara’s and Véronique’s point of view. Clara left Marseille when she was eighteen and struggles to live her present without denying her past. She was already odd in her family, too bookish for her family who had trouble understanding her hobbies and preferences. She loves her mother but doesn’t enjoy her company. And Véronique feels judged by a daughter who moved to more intellectual circles, for lack of a better word.
Véronique doesn’t know and can’t imagine how many social codes and clues Clara was missing when she met her fellow students at Sciences Po, how much energy she had to put to catch on. And she still feels out-of-sorts each time Raphaël takes her to new experiences – a weekend in Britanny turns into a fitting challenge. But Raphaël’s love is a sort of validation for her, he proves that she fits in.
The story starts with the complicated relationship between Clara and Véronique because they have nothing in common and Raphaël is the personification of the gap between the old Clara and the new Clara. Véronique and Clara don’t get along but when things get tough, they have each other’s back. For example, Véronique hates Paris but will drive all night to get there if she knows Clara needs her.
Véronique might sound obnoxious but she’s one of these women who are loud, warm, and get things done, even if it’s tough like taking care of her ageing mother-in-law when her own daughters don’t show up for the hard stuff. She may be loud and flashy, but she truly cares about the people around her.
She doesn’t shy away from problems and tackles them head on. I could see why she gets on Clara’s nerves but also that she had her heart in the right place. Véronique is real, what you see is what you get and that’s the exact opposite of Raphaël, who was brought up in a world of appearances. Clara needs to learn how to navigate into Raphaël’s world when she was brought up in a world where things are in the open. Well, almost.
La bonne mère starts as a classic tale of a transclass – Clara follows the same path as Annie Ernaux. However, just when Raphaël’s social class seems to be superior to Clara’s, Mathilda Di Matteo turns the tables on the reader and takes the story to another direction, leveling the playing field, answering the underlying question: Is Véronique a good mother? And putting fathers on the grill as well.
In the background of La Bonne Mère is the opposition between Paris and Marseille, between the capital and the regions. It’s very French I suppose, with two cities very different from one another.
I read La bonne mère just after reading L’autre moitié du monde by Laurine Roux and the difference between the two was striking. While Roux’s book was well-written and well-executed, Di Matteo has a voice. Her characters sound real, I could easily imagine Véronique, Clara, Joseph, the father and husband in the middle of them. I could picture Véronique’s clothes, her laugh, her attitudes and see Clara’s as well.
I stayed up one night to finish this book, it struck a cord in me, I guess. Hopefully, someone will translate it into English.
La bonne mère is published by the independant publisher L’Iconoclaste. It was our Book Club choice for May and it was an excellent one.
Third Crime is the Charm #21 – classic crime and Greece
- These Names Make Clues by E.C.R. Lorac (1937) – Not available in French
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (1926) French title: Le meurtre de Roger Ackroyd.
- Offshore by Petros Markaris (2016) Not available in English. French title: Offshore. Translated by Michel Volkovitch.
Here we are for the 21st episode of my Third Crime is the Charm series. I’m still catching up billets about books I read in previous months which means none of these books belong to my 20 Books of Summer challenge.
I bought These Names Makes Clues by E.C.R. Lorac when I visited the British Library. It’s one of their British Library Crime Classics.
We’re in London in a mansion in Marylebone. Graham Coombe owns a crime fiction publishing house. He organizes a treasure hunt party at his house. He invites ten guests who are named after writers. Chief Inspector McDonald is among the guests as Izaak Walton.
And then Samuel Pepys dies in the telephone room. Follows a classic whodunnit with the mischievous addition of characters disguised as Jane Austen, Laurence Sterne or Fanny Burney. It’s entertaining, not the best-in-class in its genre and oh-so-British.
I had a lot of fun with all the French words peppered in the text, like pied-à-terre or contretemps. The funniest French saying I stumbled upon was “Chacun à son métier et les vaches seront bien gardées” which means literally “To each their job and the cows will be well kept”. It’s so out-of-place in a British mansion that it made me chuckle.
Then, on a whim, I decided to reread The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie and in the original this time.
We’re in a small English village, King’s Abbot and Dr Sheppard is our narrator. Poirot is in retirement and is now Dr Sheppard’s neighbour. He’s rather bored and trying his hand at gardening and proves that having a lot of grey cells does not transfer into having a green thumb. He also misses Hastings who now lives in Argentina and hopes to find a new Hastings in Dr Sheppard.
When Roger Ackroyd is murdered, Poirot is asked to investigate the case. As his reputation precedes him, the local police is rather eager to take him on their team or is it the other way around?
You know Agatha Christie’s books, no need to get further in the plot. I didn’t remember the story at all but this time I guessed who the murderer was.
Like with the E.C.R. Lorac before I had a lot of fun with the all the French I hear in Poirot’s English. Like here: « Mademoiselle Caroline, believe me, I do everything possible to render you service. » with this render service as the literal translation of rendre service. I loved the I comprehend (Je comprends) instead of I understand.
Once, Dr Sheppard sets him right:
“I thank you, no,” said Poirot, rising. “All my excuses for having deranged you.”
“Not at all, not at all.”
“The word derange,” I remarked, when we were outside again, “is applicable to mental disorder only.”
“Ah!” cried Poirot. “Never will my English be quite perfect. A curious language. I should then have said disarranged, n’est-ce pas?”
“Disturbed is the word you had in mind.”
“I thank you, my friend. The word exact, you are zealous for it.”
It really made me laugh and I’ll read other Poirot mysteries just for the fun of Poirot’s English. Now I’m a bit self-conscious: I hope I don’t write as Poirot speaks! 😊
Our next stop is a lot less playful. I read Offshore by Petros Markaris, the tenth volume of the Kostas Haritos series.
We’re in Athens in 2015 and the country is recovering from the severe economic crisis of 2008. Money and investors are back in Greece, people are starting to breathe a little bit and make plans for the future.
Then Costas Lalopulos is murdered. He’s the head of a tourist office service. Haritos is on the case with his usual team. Something is going on and Haritos suspects corruption and drug trafficking. Then the case solves itself when culprits are handed to the police on a platter.
Haritos is suspicious about these sudden confessions but can’t do anything against it, especially since the new chief of police is knee-deep in political matters and is happy to wrap up the case.
Besides the murders (because they will be others in the same fashion), Markaris questions the sudden turn for the best of the Greek economy. Why is the country suddenly so attractive to investors? Where does the money invested in the country come from?
His vision –documented or not, I don’t know— is that international criminal organizations saw in Greece a weak country in the EU and targeted it to settle some of their operations there. In other words, all the money flooding in is dirty money.
Offshore is an interesting book but not a great book. It’s not available in English, in case you’re wondering. I still enjoy reading the Haritos series because there’s always a focus on a political issue in Greece and because Haritos’s family is so warm and funny. Markaris makes me travel and discover Athens with his characters and I love armchair traveling with books.
Next billet will also be a catch up before I finally start writing about 20 Books of Summer reads!
The Nix by Nathan Hill – ghosts from the past and state of the nation
The Nix by Nathan Hill. (2016). French title: Les fantômes du vieux pays. Translated by Mathilde Bach.
“What’s true? What’s false? In case you haven’t noticed, the world has pretty much given up on the old Enlightenment idea of piecing together the truth based on observed data. Reality is too complicated and scary for that. Instead, it’s way easier to ignore all data that doesn’t fit your preconceptions and believe all data that does. I believe what I believe, and you believe what you believe, and we’ll agree to disagree. It’s liberal tolerance meets dark ages denialism. It’s very hip right now.”
I tend to shy away from big books, which means I wasn’t thrilled when my Kube subscription brought me The Nix by Nathan Hill. Holy hell, 720 pages in small print. Good call from the Kube libraire though, as it was surprisingly easy to read. Now it’s hard to sum up.
We’re in 2011. Samuel Andresen-Anderson is in his early thirties, he’s a literature teacher in a small university in Illinois. He’s single, likes his job but doesn’t love it, escapes from his life to play World of Elfscape, an online video game. He’s a bit adrift. He has published one novel and is late delivering his second book to his publisher. He hasn’t seen his mother Faye since 1988 when she left him in the care of his father and disappeared from their lives.
Now she has thrown gravels at the face of a potential candidate to the presidential election. She has been arrested and painted as a dangerous activist with a seedy. She might spend years in prison. Her lawyer reaches out to Samuel to help him save her from prison. He needs to reconcile the mother he knew (married to her high school sweetheart) with this supposed activist.
Meanwhile, Samuel is having trouble with a student who doesn’t want to study, plagiarized her essay, got caught and doesn’t want to acknowledge she cheated. She is ready to ruin his reputation to save her grades. His publisher threatens to ask for the payback of his book advance if he doesn’t send him a draft of the novel immediately, unless he replaces the unwritten novel by a book about Faye.
Samuel is in a bind. He’s threatened financially, in his job and he has unsolved abandonment issues since he doesn’t know why Faye left. He folds and agrees to write this book about a mother he hasn’t seen in years. He embarks on a journey to reconnect to his mother and understand who she is, what she did and why.
Hill’s novel goes back and forth between Samuel’s and Faye’s POVs. We start in 2011, then go back to 1988 and 1968. These were the turning point years.
- 2011: Faye reappears in Samuel’s life and his professional life is at risk.
- 1988: Samuel is friends with Bishop and Bettany Fall. They are twins who go to the same school as him and live in the same neighborhood. Bishop becomes his best friend and Samuel falls in love with Bettany. This is the summer where Bishop and Bettany move away and Faye disappears.
- 1968: Faye leaves her small town in Iowa to go and study in Chicago. Life-changing events happen there.
Nathan Hill draws two wounded characters both hurt by their parents. Faye’s father emigrated from Norway and told his daughter about “the nix”, a ghost that settles in houses. He always longed for his old country and was never truly happy in Iowa. He transferred his angst to his daughter.
Faye is haunted by her past, conflicted between what she wanted to be and what she had to settle for. She transferred her angst to Samuel.
The book includes this thread about family traumas and how they travel from one generation to the other. Samuel is on a healing journey, he needs this investigation about his mother to understand his past and move on and really live his life.
Besides the family story, Nathan Hill pictures the American society from 1968 to 2011. There’s a long part about the demonstrations in Chicago in 1968. He reflects on how the media influenced what the country thought about these demonstrations, he shows how activists were manipulated and he reveals the hypocrisy of the system.
It is the same with Samuel and the issue with his student. She spreads lies, she utilizes the system to her own benefit and has absolutely no conscience. She’s a criminal in her ways but so are the administration of the university who fail to fight for a member of their faculty. This part reminded me of The Stain by Philip Roth.
All along the pages, Nathan Hill points out the absurdity, the greed and the total lack of principles that govern the American society. (and other ones too, but this is a book about America) He puts the stress on endless consumerism, politics as a show and violence. He published his book in 2016, which means it was written in 2014 at the latest. He had not seen the worst, i.e. what happened when the Agent Orange became PODUS.
His analysis is never in plain sight but seeps through passing comments, futile discussions or plain statements. Like here:
“Steak and chicken have too much baggage these days. Was it free-range? Antibiotic-free? Cruelty-free? Organic? Kosher? Did the farmer wear silken gloves to caress it to sleep every night while singing gentle lullabies? You can’t order a fucking hamburger anymore without embracing some kind of political platform.”
I can relate to that since someone once explained to me that I should only eat eggs if I was sure that the hen was happy to give them to me.
Nathan Hill stresses upon three years: 1968, 1988 and 2011.
In 1968, the students rebel against the Vietnam war, the hippies want another kind of society and the Civil Rights movement had won major battles but took a blow after Martin Luther King was murdered. Conservative people play on people’s fears to maintain the status quo. Be afraid of Communists, of hippies, of blacks who want to become citizen. Anything to win their support in the urns. Television is powerful but as volatile as dynamite.
1988 is important to Samuel and his family but it’s also the beginning of Reagan’s second term. In these years, the USA gave themselves away to unbridled capitalism and turned their back to the welfare state born after WWII.
2011 is the year of Occupy Wall Street, an attempt at opposing to wild capitalism. Social networks are invading our lives and video games become addictive. Hill depicts a character who is addicted to World of Elfsape and the description is absolutely terrifying – and probably accurate.
As you can see, this is an ambitious book and it’s difficult to write about it. Hill managed to merge Samuel and Faye’s story into a state of the nation book. And this state-of-the-nation book is easy to read, dark and funny, appalling and full of grace sometimes. It shows the workings of the USA, whether we like it or not. And Samuel is on his own small boat, trying to navigate in the middle of all this. He’s like us and I liked him a lot.
Verdict: Worth reading. Don’t worry about the 720 pages in small print. If you’ve read it, I’ll be happy to discuss it with you.
Mehs & DNFs #3 – North America, Spain and France.
- White Fang by Jack London (1906) French title : Croc Blanc.
- How to Build a Fire by Jack London (1908) French title: Comment construire un feu.
- The Other Half of the World by Laurine Roux (2022) Not available in English. Original French title : L’autre moitié du monde.
- The Bookstore of Banned Books by Marc Levy (2024) Not available in English. Original French title: La librairie des livres interdits.
We’re in June, 20 Books of Summer has started and my TBW pile is high. I need to catch up quickly to make room for the upcoming billets. This “Mehs and DNFS” series is about books I liked but didn’t love or books I didn’t finish. Thankfully, it’s only the third episode. 🙂
Séverine and I decided to read White Fang by Jack London. I had an omnibus edition which includes The Call of the Wild and the short story How to Build a Fire. This was a terrible tale of how things can go wrong very quickly in the wilderness. Don’t ever build a fire under a tree loaded with snow and never venture out there on your own, these are the lessons of this short-story.
I guess most of you know what White Fang is about, the story of wolf who started his early life in the wild and was tamed by an Indian master, sold to a cruel one and rehabbed by a loving one. I struggled with the book even if I acknowledge it’s a masterpiece.
London transports the reader to Klondike, the snow and the harsh winters. His picture of the dog’s mindset, his learning curve and his emotions is fascinating and rings true. I could picture the nature in Canada but also in California. And White Fang’s point of view rang true.
The novel is political: London shows how White Fang responds to his master’s treatment and how his behavior changes according to it. He responds to violence with violence and to kindness with love and loyalty. If a government is violent with its citizen, they’ll be keen on violence and upheavals; if it is generous and benevolent, people will respond in kind.
London demonstrates with White Fang the impact of one’s education on their temper and reminds us that we are the product of our education. It seems obvious but in 1905, don’t forget we’re in the aftermath of theories like Lombroso’s who tried to prove that some people are pre-determined criminals according to the shape of their skull.
The part of the book where Weedon Scott works with White Fang to remove his distrust of humans and unlearn his belligerent attitude reminded me of White Dog by Romain Gary. Now I wonder if White Fang inspired White Dog.
I didn’t love White Fang but I’m glad I read it. Isn’t it a book tagged as children lit? The style is quite elaborate for today’s children, in my opinion. What do you think? Is it still taught in schools?
This was part of my Reading With Séverine and Tame the TBR projects.
Now let’s move to the Ebro delta in Catalonia. We’re in the 1930s and later in the 1960s. L’autre moitié du monde by Laurine Roux is set on a farming estate. When the book opens, Toya is eleven, her mother is a cook at the master’s mansion and her father works in the fields. Toya doesn’t go to school and spends her days with her mom in the kitchen.
The wind of modernity and communism reaches their corner of the world when a new teacher arrives at the school and his lawyer and activist friend settles in the area to help farm hands who have been wrongly accused of unrest and imprisoned.
The book has ambition, that’s for sure. However, I thought the characters were too monolithic to be true. The aristocrats and landlord are cruel, their son is specialized in torture, sexual assault and murder. The droit de seigneur persisted and it would have been enough to have the son rape Toya’s mother. Was it necessary to picture him as a sadistic murderer too?
Part of the book is set during the Spanish Civil war and I didn’t think the author had done enough homework about it. It remains vague and unsatisfactory to me but maybe it reflected the limited vision that the peasants had of what was happening in the country due to the lack of reliable information.
I can’t pinpoint it but something was off in this book. The story was too farfetched, too predictable and the characters too black-and-white. The style was too adorned and I never heard the author’s real voice. I heard someone writing and drafting a story.
But that’s on me, the book had good critics and is easy to read. Maybe I read it at the wrong time. Maybe I’m right and it lacks of grey areas to make it more true-to-life. At least I learnt about the Ebro delta region and its rice fields and now I would love to visit. (After all, it’s less than a ten hours drive from my home!)
The last book of this billet is La Librairie des livres interdits by Marc Levy. (literally The Bookstore of Banned Books) I am not a Marc Levy reader, I don’t think he’s a literary writer and this book only confirmed my opinion of him. I wanted to read this one because I attended a panel at Quais du Polar where he explained why he wrote this book.
Levy lives in New York and he’s horrified by the tsunami of censorship that floods the country. He wanted to write a book about resisting to book bans. I expected a story where Mitch, the libraire of the bookstore becomes a resistant and starts trafficking banned books. I thought the whole book would be about this. Not at all!
In 120 pages Mitch had organized a clandestine book club, been arrested and released from prison after he did his time. And then the story becomes a botched love story / revenge story with a ridiculous ending. It lasts 200 more pages.
And the style! He needs to worry about AI, really. Computers might replace him. So, unfortunately, La Librairie des livres interdits only comforted what I thought about Levy’s books. He’s not for me.
But. He has millions of readers who worship his books. He based his story on a HB 1467 Law which is an actual law voted in Florida. At the end of the book, he explains what’s currently happening in the USA with the book bans. He gives a list of classics or modern classics which are banned at the moment and why. There’s a QR code to learn more about banned books.
He used his clout for a good cause. The colleague who put the book on the little library shelf in our staff room had never heard of the extensive book bans in the US. He brings awareness to his readers, and we who cherish the freedom to read whatever we want whenever we want, need all the help we can have and shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. So, thanks for this book, M. Levy.
The next billet will be about a book I admired, I promise!
The Short Story of Women Artists by Susie Hodge
The Short Story of Women Artists by Susie Hodge (2019) French title: Petite histoire des Artistes femmes. Translated by Stéphanie Alkofer.
This has been on my To Be Written list for ages. I read The Short Story of Women Artists by Susie Hodge in January and I still don’t know how to write about it. I think its blurb is accurate:
The Short Story of Women Artists tells the full history – from the breakthroughs that women have made in pushing for parity with male artists, to the important contributions made to otherwise male-dominated artistic movements, and the forgotten and obscured artists who are now being rediscovered and reassessed.
Accessible, concise and richly illustrated, the book reveals the connections between different periods, artists and styles, giving readers a thorough understanding and broad enjoyment of the full achievements that female artists have made.
The book has four different entries, one with the artistic movements from the Renaissance to nowadays and their description, one with one painting or sculpture per artist, one about the major breakthroughs and one per theme. (Religion)
I discovered a lot of women artists I’d never heard of. I enjoyed reading the short biographies of these artists and some of them were very famous at their time. They were among the favorite painters of the aristocracy or were members of artistic organizations. For example, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749-1803) was one of the four women members of the Académie Royale de peinture. She was a famous portraitist of her time and even painted Rosbespierre.
Some like Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614) or Lilly Martin Spencer (1822-1902) were the breadwinners of the family. Lilly Martin Spencer had seven children, a husband who decided to be a stay-at-home father and boost his wife’s career.
Several had an untimely death due to pregnancies, like the women of their time. Most of them had to accommodate their work to the constraints of their time. For example, they couldn’t paint nude models or take painting lessons where nude models were involved. It was still enforced in Suzanne Valadon’s time.
Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899) who mostly painted animals had a special police authorization to wear men clothes for her art. (In France, at the time, women who wore pants could be fined. Yes, it’s unbelievable but true.) These restrictions explain why many of them painted domestic scenes, self-portraits or still lives and used their own family and pets as models.
I was quite impressed by Scotland Forever! by Lady Elizabeth Thompson Butler who painted a war scene that was later used as propaganda by the British and German forces during WWI. She had never set a foot on a battle field but had free access to the training of her husband’s regiment.
All in all, I got the impression that the women born before the 1950s made it as artists in their time despite the hurdles of societal expectations and thanks to the help or leeway of the men in their lives, i.e. progressist fathers and husbands. Sad but still true. These women artists were feminists because of their artistic endeavors. Some actively worked to help other women (through teaching for example) or paved the way to future artists because they lived their life according to their own rhythm and rules.
I don’t have a formal education in fine arts and I’m not very knowledgeable about painting. I just enjoy going to the museum. A lot of these artists were unknown to me but I can’t sort out whether it’s because I don’t have the adequate cultural background or if they were thrown in the closet of art history by patriarchy. The truth is probably a mix of the two.
I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who needs a light and easy introduction to women artists. I also think it’s an interesting book to put into the hands of teenagers.
I’ll end this billet with this sarcastic work of art by The Guerrilla Girls (1988) which I love. It’s so Mafalda!
Third Crime is the Charm #20 : Québec, Luxembourg, France and Norway. Three Beach & Public Transport books.
- The Coral Bride by Roxane Bouchard (2020) Original French title: La mariée de corail.
- All Inclusive by Jacky Schwartzmann (2018) Original French title: Pension complète.
- The Cabin by Jørn Lier Horst (2018) French title: La chambre du fils. Translated by Aude Pasquier.
As usual, I read my share of crime fiction and it’s time for a Third Crime is the Charm billet that will take us to the Gaspé Peninsula, in Québec, to Luxembourg and France and to Norway.
Let’s start with The Coral Bride by Roxane Bouchard. She’s a French-speaking author from Québec and her novel is set in the lovely area named the Gaspé Peninsula. It was a Book Club and Reading With Séverine choice. I have a signed copy from Quais du Polar and the author herself recommended this one to start with her books.
Angel Roberts is found dead on her fishing boat. She’s one of the only women who fish for a living and it’s a ruthless world for her. She comes from a fishermen family and her father and brothers have a hard time with her choice as a profession. There’s also a family feud between her family and her husband’s and it all comes from a rivalry regarding fishing rights.
So what happened to her? It can be an accident. Can it be a suicide? Or is it a murder?
Joaquin Morales is the police officer in charge of the investigation. He has relocated to the Gaspé Peninsula and he’s not totally settled, in his professional or personal life. He still gets to know his new colleagues and he’s separated from his wife. Now, one of his adult sons has come to live with him, leaving his job and his girlfriend behind. Father and son aren’t talkative and are searching their way towards one another.
I really enjoyed The Coral Bride. The plot was good with well-drawn characters and an interesting take on the fishing world in the Gaspé Peninsula. Roxane Bouchard looked into the fishing world, with its quotas, their attribution and the resentment that go with what is sometimes felt as unfair. I loved her description of the nature as I have very fond memories of the area. It’s breathtaking.
I also liked Joaquin as a character, his gentle ways, his issues with his family and his navigating in a new life in Gaspé.
And last but not least, the French from Québec. It’s a delight as they translate North-American realities into French. Thanksgiving is the Jour de l’action de grâce. They found a way to say waders, a word that remains in italic in most translations of fly-fishing related books published by Gallmeister. They call them bottes-pantalon, which is perfectly fitting. Sometimes they find a similar sounding French words and I would have never understood how a character could climb on a “corde de bois” had I not read Indian Creek and seen Pete Fromm chop wood for the upcoming winter.
In France, The Coral Bride is published by an independent publisher, Les Editions de l’Aube. I have decided to single them out in my billets now and include a made-up “Indie Publisher” logo. If you wish to do the same, feel free to use this logo as well.
Now let’s move to All Inclusive by Jacky Schwartzmann.
It’s French crime and it’s not available in English. The original title is Pension complète. It’s a mixed genre between comedy and noir, a bit like Carlos Salem, Benoît Philippon or Sébastien Gendron. I don’t think these books are good enough to make it into English translation but they are good Beach & Public Transport books.
Dino Scala is a gigolo, even if he resents the title. He’s in his fifties, was born and raised in a rowdy suburb of the Lyon metropolis and now lives with Lucienne, a rich old lady in Luxemburg. His comfortable life has taken a nasty turn since Lucienne’s mother came to live with them after her stroke. After an unfortunate encounter with a police officer in Luxemburg, Lucienne sends him away for a while and he ends up at the camping des Naïades near La Ciotat.
He feels like a fish out of the water in this blue collar campsite and meets Charles Desservy on the premises. He’s a Goncourt prize winner who is at the campsite doing research for his next book. He also stands out like a sore thumb and the two men become fast friends. The only issue is that Charles really has weird ways to get rid of hurdles that stand in his way and his friendship might become a tiny bit cumbersome for Dino.
All Inclusive is not an excellent book but I had a lot of fun reading it. It spoke to me because I know Luxemburg and what he describes is spot on. I’m also very fond of beaches in the South East of France with their warm water, hot sun, the smell of sunscreen mixed with salty water, the burning sand and the buoyant families having fun. And of course, I know of this Lyon suburb.
It’s another good Beach & Public Transport book, just like The Cabin by Jørn Lier Horst.
The beaches in Norway don’t have the same climate as the ones in La Ciotat. They do have a lot of cabins in Norway though, I’m under the impression that every book by Jørn Lier Horst mentions one. This time, it’s the title of the sixth episode of the William Wisting series.
The Cabin belongs to Bernhard Clausen, a famous figure of the local political party. When he dies, a lot of money in cash is discovered in his home. Due to his political position, the affair goes straight up the police hierarchy and Wisting is appointed on the case from Oslo, with strict instructions to keep his mission confidential.
He soon stumbles upon the unsolved murder of Simon Meier and the missing bounty of a robbery. Both happened at the same time fifteen years ago but are they related to Clausen?
Jørn Lier Horst is a reliable crime fiction writer. The stories are all different from one another. They involve his personal life and his daughter Line and the balance between the crime fiction side and the family side well-done. I’ll keep reading the series.
These three books fit easily in my various reading projects. I’ve already written about Horst six times, I’m not going to recommend him once again. However, I recommend Roxane Bouchard, especially if you can read it in French.
20 Books of Summer 2026 – my list. #20BOS26
Annabel is hosting 20 Books of Summer again! Thank you!
This is a blogging event when a reader decides to read 10, 15 or 20 books from June 1st to August 31st. So, 20 Books of Summer it is for me and 20 Books of Winter it is for our friends from down under.
According to my Goodreads account, I’ve been doing this since 2021. I usually have more time to read during the holidays and this year we have planned a week at the beach, a week in the mountains and a week at home, which means I’ll have a lot of reading time. I’m confident I can make the 20 books challenge.
As usual, I had a lot of fun picking the 20 books, or at least the books that were not already part of my ongoing reading projects. Some belong to two events and are repeated in italic.
Here we go!
Books from my Reading with Séverine and Book Club choices.
- Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jerowski. (UK, 2020)
- Dirt Music by Tim Winton (Australia, 2001)
- We Were Wolves by Sandrine Collette (France, 2022)
- The Clay Eaters by Peter Farris (USA, 2019)
Swimming in the Dark is a novella about two young gay men in Warsaw in 1980 and it sounds great. I’ve already read two books by Sandrine Collette and she writes beautiful but harsh books. This one got the Prix Renaudot des Lycéens, meaning high school students gave it a literary prize. I’ve never read Tim Winton, I’m not sure he’s a writer for me but I want to give him a try. He’s such a famous Australian writer! The Peter Farris is published by Gallmeister, I’m sure I’ll like it.
Books for the 2026 Great Canadian Reading Challenge.
- Hollywood by Marc Séguin (2012)
- Azami by Aki Shimazaki (2025)
- Infrared by Nancy Huston (2010)
- Buried Your Dead by Louise Penny (2010)
This Canadian selection is an odd mix, I know. Marc Séguin is from Québec but the book is set in the USA. Aki Shimazaki is Japanese but emigrated to Québec, writes in French and her books are set in Japan. Nancy Huston was born in Calgary, lives in Paris and writes in French. And Louise Penny writes in English but all her books are set in Québec. What does it tell about Canada?
Books for the Cloak & Dagger challenge.
- Snare by Lilja Sigurdardottir (Iceland, 2015)
- Her Name is Knight by Yasmin Angoe (Ghana, 2021)
- Better the Blood by Michael Bennett (New Zealand, 2022)
- The Field of Jellyfish by Oto Oltvanji (Serbia, 2023)
- Turn On the Heat by Erle Stanley Gardner (USA, 1940)
- Out of Range by C.J. Box (USA, 2006)
- Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny (Canada, 2010)
There are seven crime fiction books in the selection. What can I say? They’re good Beach and Public Transport books and I’m going to spend time on trains and on beaches in the next three months. I’m happy with my pick as I’ll be traveling to very different countries with these books.
Books I could read for July in Paris – I believe that Emma will host it again.
- Persian Letters by Montesquieu (1721)
- River Guillotine by Antoine de Meaux (2015)
- Isle of Point Nemo by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès (2014)
- The Gasp by Romain Gary (1977)
- We Were Wolves by Sandrine Collette (2022)
I’ve wanted to read Persian Letters for a long time and I’m looking forward to it.
River Guillotine is historical fiction set in Lyon during the French Revolution. I heard Lyon was a hot place in that time, so I’m curious about the historical side of the book. I’m not sure about the literary side, though.
I received Isle of Point Nemo through my Kube subscription and to be honest, I don’t think I would have bought it myself. It’s tagged as Fantasy, Steam Punk – what does that even mean? – Science Fiction and Books About Books on Goodreads. I don’t know what to expect but it sounds like a hit-of-miss book. Either I’ll love it or I’ll drop it before the end.
Other books.
- Serena by Ron Rash (USA, 2008)
- Empress of the Air by Pete Fromm (USA, 2025)
- Never Wipe Tears Without Gloves by Jonas Gardell (Sweden, 2012)
I’m so happy I received the latest book by Pete Fromm! I’ve been saving it, not willing to read it too quickly because I’ll have to wait for the next one. Thankfully Gallmeister keeps publishing his books in French because he doesn’t have a publisher in the US anymore.
I’m reluctant to read big books and for this reason alone, I wouldn’t have bought Never Wipe Tears Without Gloves by Jonas Gardnell. It came with my Kube subscription and it’s not available in English. It’s about a gay couple in the 1980s in Stockholm, in the middle of the AIDS storm. It’s 815 pages in small print. I really hope it’s a page turner.
All these books sound wonderful or a little challenging but they are varied in genres, in countries and in length. You can see on the covers in which language I’ll read them. Plans are great but I may take the liberty to switch with other books if I want to.
The 20 Books of Summer event also comes with a Bingo Card.
I should be able to tick several boxes but we’ll see how it pans out at the end of the summer.
What about you? Will you also participate to 10-15-20 Books of Summer/Winter?
Things We Left Unsaid by Zoyâ Pirzâd – in the Armenian community in Iran before the Islamic Revolution
Things We Left Unsaid by Zoyâ Pirzâd (2011) French title: C’est moi qui éteins les lumières. Translated by Christophe Balaÿ.
Things We Left Unsaid by Zoyâ Pirzâd is translated from the Persian and set in the Armenian community in Adaban, in the 1970s.
Clarisse is a stay-at-home mother of three. Her husband makes a comfortable income at the Oil Company, they live in a wealthy middle-class neighborhood. They speak Armenian at home and their whole community live on their own. They have their schools, their churches and their remembrance day for the 1915 genocide.
Clarisse is typical housewife of her class and time. Her main occupations are to handle house duties, raise the children and take care of her husband. Her main concern is to dodge the bullets of her critical mother and to keep away from her mother’s schemes to get her other daughter Alice married.
Clarisse is quiet, she learnt a long time ago that her life is easier if she avoids conflict. She’s self-effacing and runs domestic duties from the sidelines and follows the flow of events for everything else.
Her peaceful routine is disturbed when their friends Nina and Garnik move away to a posher neighborhood and the Simonians move into their former house.
Emile Simonian is divorced and lives with his mother and his daughter Emilie. They soon invite themselves into their neighbors’ lives.
Mrs Simonian is rather domineering with her aristocratic ways and her scandalous past. She blows hot and cold and Clarisse never knows what to expect with her, which is unsettling for the quiet Clarisse.
Emilie is in the same class as Armen, Clarisse’s son. She plays with Clarisse’s daughters but also fascinates her son. He’s fifteen and soon has a crush on the bold Emilie. She’s a bit cruel, with her cruelty hidden under honeyed manners. And Emile is a professional flirt who goes under Clarisse’s skin. He pays attention to her and sees her as woman, someone who’s in the backstage of her life, out-staged by Clarisse-the-mom, Clarisse-the-wife and Clarisse-the-daughter.
Not much happens in Things We Left Unsaid. The Simonians are a storm in Clarisse’s tea-cup life. Nothing much happens on the surface but they make her rethink her carefully organized life and herself as a woman. Other family drama occur around Emile and ladies, around Alice in her quest of a husband, all while protest movements against the shah are brewing.
This novel is a lovely journey into a community who doesn’t know yet how History is going to hit them, with the Islamic Revolution and the upcoming Iran/Irak war. We see a tight-knit family with their everyday little dramas and they sound so like any family anywhere. They just live under another climate, speak a different language and eat different food.
That’s the power of literature, I believe.
This is my second book by Zoyâ Pirzâd, after The Space Between Us. If you enjoy Barbara Pym or Anne Tyler, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy Things We Left Unsaid and you’ll discover a side of Iran you probably never knew of.
Things We Left Unsaid by Zoyâ Pirzâd came through the post via my KUBE subscription and I suggested to Séverine and my Book Club friends that we read it together. So, Zoyâ Pirzâd got several additional readers thanks to Aymeric, libraire at Kube, who picked this book for me. Thanks Aymeric!
Proust, a Family Affair by Laure Murat – brilliant
Proust, a Family Affair by Laure Murat (2023) French title: Proust, roman familial.
| Mon destin, on me l’a assez répété, était de me marier et d’avoir des enfants. Je n’ai pas d’enfant, je ne suis pas mariée, je vis avec une femme, je suis professeure d’université aux Etats-Unis, je vote à gauche et je suis féministe. Pour le milieu d’où je viens, c’est excéder de beaucoup le délit de cumul des mandats. | My future, they kept telling me, was to get married and have children. I don’t have any children, I’m not married, I live with a woman, I’m a university professor in the USA, I vote for the social-democrats and I’m a feminist. For where I come from, it’s a high tally of felonies. |
Laure Murat was born an aristocrat. Her title is Princesse Laure Murat. On her father’s side, she’s a descendant of Joachim Murat, Empire nobility. On her mother’s side, she’s from the Luynes, Ancien Régime nobility. She grew up in the posh city of Neuilly-Sur-Seine, near the Bois de Boulogne, near Passy where Proust’s uncle used to live. Her families were certainly among the Parisian elite described in The Elegant Life of the Parisian High Society in the early 19th century by Anne Martin-Fugier.
In her essay, Proust, roman familial, Laure Murat writes about her family history and how it overlaps with what Proust dissects in In Search of Lost Time. It’s also consistent with Anne Martin-Fugier’s explanations. The aristocratic generations pass and the customs remain.
Laure Murat was born in 1967, her father was born in 1925 and her mother in 1939. As she says, her father isn’t old enough to have known the aristocracy of the Belle Epoque but his grand-mother owned the Hotel Mural near the Montsouris park in Paris. She had a famous salon and Proust got his first invitation to her hotel in 1904.
Laure Murat was raised in an aristocratic world that lives for rigid traditions, breathes a sense of superiority and that wants to keep up appearances at all cost. It’s a stultifying world where codes of conduct are ingrained, transmitted from one generation to the other like a genetic disease. Everybody lives off old money, nobody has a job and everyone thinks it’s perfectly normal. They keep up with the codified soirées, the inbred marriages and so on.
Her life is unusual. She was born in a closed world that common people can’t really picture. It’s hard for common people like me to really understand where she comes from.
For me, it’s a literary world, something of the past, not something someone born in 1967 grew up in. She writes about school holidays at the château de Luynes and it’s normal life for her. It’s so striking that her quotidian was closer to the quotidian of a girl from La Belle Epoque than to the quotidian of the average French girl of her age.
Laure Murat is a specialist of Proust and her essay explores the interactions of her family culture and Proust. Her family tree belongs to the soirées that Proust used to go to. When she was a child, her own parents hosted diners with the political, literary, artistic or scientific elite of their time. For example, Corisande de Gramont, who besides being a great engineer was also the grand-daughter of the comtesse Greffulhe (model for the Duchesse de Guermantes), the daughter of Armand de Guiche (one of Proust’s best friends) and the grand-daughter of Robert de Montesquiou (model for the Baron de Charlus)
Her world and Proust’s worlds – plural, for his real life and his fictional world – are intertwined.
The book alternates between personal memories, the description of her milieu, an analysis of her parents’ personalities. She was closer to her father than to her mother. He was an erudite, a historian, constantly reading and studying. This is what I envy the most about rentiers, not that they have the luxury to be idle but that they have the luxury to occupy themselves with whatever they fancy without wondering whether it pays the bills.
Her essay goes beyond a basic comparison as it also dives into In Seach of Lost Time, in search of Proust but also as a self-help book. When she came out, her mother rejected her. It was final. Laure Murat finds in Proust’s work what she witnessed in her daily family life. Everyone in their milieu knows who is homosexual but like with the baron Charlus, they have to keep up appearances and they turn their head the other way. It’s known but not acknowledged. Her crime was to own it.
She sees in Proust a kindred spirit who, after seeking the glamour of the aristocratic world, saw and told how ugly it was. She devotes a whole chapter to the dreadful episode of the red shoes.
Every reader of In Seach of Lost Time remembers that passage where the Duchesse de Guermantes and her husband show their total lack of empathy, their callousness and their wacked priorities in life. They have a party that night. They’ve been holding their breath all day that one of their dying relatives would hold on to life until after the party because they didn’t want to miss it. Now their close friend Swann comes to their home to tell them he’s terminally ill. They brush him off because they have to go to the party and too top it off, the duke makes a fuss about the duchess’s shoes. They won’t do and he sends her change them before they go. This fashion detail and the party were more important than their friend’s news.
Proust and Laure Murat tell us the same thing. Don’t be fooled by titles or good manners. Vulgarity isn’t always apparent and in a way, the maid Françoise has a lot more decency and good manners than the duchesse de Guermantes.
Laure Murat takes us to the Paris Proust knew, researching the real Jupien, looking for intersections between Proust’s life and her family’s history. She says that at first, the aristocracy was irked by Proust’s depiction of them. Now, they are flattered to know who inspired such and such character.
Proust helped her understand her family traditions, helped her understand that what she felt about her milieu was valid. She’s an unconventional class defector. The term is usually used for blue collars who become bourgeois but it works for her too. She left the aristocratic world behind and sees it through the lenses of literature and probably sociology.
Proust, a Family Affair is a fantastic essay as it perfectly mixes her personal life with literature. It’s an easy read and a precious testimony of what Proust’s world became after he died and later, after WWII.
She’s also very encouraging about reading Proust, saying it’s unfairly considered as a difficult read. It’s long, it requires commitment but it’s not difficult. I agree with her, the first volume isn’t the best and it’s tempting to stop after this one but pushing through is rewarding.
Proust, roman familial was published in France in 2023 and will come out in English on November 5th, 2026. It is translated by Charlotte Mandell, who also translated In the Shadow of Girls in Blossom by Marcel Proust. It’s available on pre-order, rush for it.
The Elegant Life of the Parisian High Society in the early 19th century by Anne Martin-Fugier
The Elegant Life, or the Rise of the Parisian Elite. 1815-1848 by Anne Martin-Fugier (1990). Original French title : La vie élégante. Ou la formation du Tout-Paris, 1815-1848.
This essay about the Parisian Elite between the fall of Napoléon (1815) and the Second Republic (1848) had been sitting on my shelf for a few years before my Tame the TBR project propelled it on the 2026 reading list. Famous writers of the time were Balzac, Stendhal, Hugo, Musset, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Mérimée, Gauthier or Sand. Flaubert will come a bit later.
Before we talk about the book, a bit of French history.
1815-1848 are the last years during which France had a king. After Napoléon’s fall came the Restauration (1815-1830) and two kings were on the throne: Louis XVIII (1815-1824) and Charles X (1824-1830) who abdicated in 1830 after the July Revolution.
The Restauration meant the reinstalment of the monarchy as it was before the Revolution of 1789 where the monarch was an absolute ruler of hereditary lands deriving power from God. Louis XVIII (1755-1824) and Charles X (1757-1836) were Louis XVI’s brothers and the last kings of the Bourbon family.
In 1830, Louis-Philippe was elected King of the French after the July Revolution, meaning that he was not an absolute ruler but a constitutional ruler ruling by the will of the French people and for the good of the French people. He abdicated his throne during the 1848 Revolution that led to the Second Republic.
Louis XVIII died on the throne, Charles X died in exile in Austria, land of the absolute ruler and Louis-Philippe died in exile in England, land of the constitutional monarchy. How telling.
Now that we have established this historical context, let’s go back to Anne Martin-Fugier’s book about the Parisian elite of the time.
Her essay is divided into themed chapters. The first two ones were rather tedious to read and dealt with the customs and rules of the courts during the Restauration and during Louis-Philippe’s reigns.
When Louis XVIII comes to power he intends to move back to pre-1789 times and reinstalls the rules and etiquette enforced during the reign of Louis XVI. He wants to redo Versailles but he has an issue: Napoléon created the Empire Nobility, princes, princesses, dukes and duchesses nominated according to the emperor’s will and very attached to their titles. Louis XVIII had to include them in the nobility but the difference remains between the nobility of Ancien Régime and nobility of Empire.
Louis-Philippe’s court was very different. Bourgeois were admitted at court, the rules of etiquette loosened and it was considered as rather vulgar. The old nobility made fun of it.
Chapter 3 was about the Salons and high society. As far as high society was concerned, Paris was divided in four quarters. (Don’t forget this is not today’s Paris but Paris before the Haussmann transformation done during the Second Empire)
The Salons were in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, lair of the aristocrats; the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, another lair of aristocrats and quartier of the foreigner and ambassies; the Marais, the neighborhood of old families. (This is where Madame de Sévigné had her mansion) and La Chaussée d’Antin, home of the bourgeoisie and new money.
It helped me understand where the Salons in Proust came from and I’m sure it’d help me understand Balzac better now.
Chapter 4 was fascinating as it was about balls, dances, ambassies and charity events. They did a lot of masked balls, especially for the children. They spent a lot of times together at parties, knew each other well and would marry within their circle. I was shocked to read about the number of balls organized during the season with children going to bed quite late several times a week because they were partying. They were raised to have an idle life.
Dancing was also a very serious and complicated affair with lots of rehearsals before balls to be able to follow the steps and learn new dances. Embassies also threw parties as part of what we’d call now “soft power”
High society also hosted charity balls were the entry ticket was at a stiff price, a way to show off under the guise of helping people in need. They collected quite a lot of money with these balls.
Chapter five was about conversation, wits and the advantages of high society. Socialites met several times a week in salons, on top of balls and outings like the opera. I couldn’t help wondering how they didn’t grow tired of being with the same people all the time, seeing the same faces and not doing anything useful.
Salons had rules of etiquette too. About almost everything was following a protocol, from the layout of furniture to speaking in turns and about what.
Ladies like Delphine de Girardin hold salons and changed the rules of old salons. For example, Girardin’s revolution was to change the layout of furniture: instead of putting chairs in a circle, she moved the furniture around to foster free talks. She has a whole chapter to herself as she was also a society columnist under a penname. Her Lettres parisiennes were published during three years and gathered in a book published in 1843. She frequently hosted diners with Hugo, Musset, Balzac and Gauthier.
A lot of political discussions occurred in salons and the objective was to mix all political currents in one salon to have debates of better quality. The political currents of the time were the Bonapartists, the Liberals, the Constitutionals and the Ultras (Chateaubriand)
Madame de Récamier was the queen of the political pick-and-mix in her salon. A lot of political decisions were made in these salons.
The fun thing is that there were too many law graduates at the time and all of them coveted a position as a civil servants. Imagine that they were doing unpaid internships in ministries in the hope of getting an actual position someday. It could last several years, during which their families had to support them. Think about all these characters ‘studying law’ in 19th century novels. Well, here they are!
Anne Martin-Fugier compares the careers of two politicians of the time, Rémusat (1797-1875) and Thiers (1797-1877). Both were not nobility but Rémusat came from an influential family while Thiers was on scholarship and a product of meritocracy. The author says that Balzac might have shaped Rastignac after Thiers.
The high society was very involved in politics. This is something tangible in Indiana by George Sand, published in 1832.
At the time, a lot of people attended the speeches at the Chamber of Deputies. They had to sell tickets to monitor the number of people admitted in parliament. Tickets constantly sold out. Women of the aristocracy and of the bourgeoisie attended the debates. Being an MP was glamorous and a very coveted position. It was fashionable.
Being an eloquent speaker was a must. For example, Lamartine was a Chamber of Deputies’ favorites because he excelled at speeches. Politicians had rehearsals and training sessions in salons. Young people had special circles to develop these skills.
Chapter VIII is about universities, the Académie and literature. Paris was boiling with ideas. It was highly fashionable to attend classes at the Sorbonne or at the Collège de France. University teachers like Guizot (history), Villemain (history of literature), and Cousin (philosophy) were stars. People rushed to their conferences. In the 1840s, Quinet and Michelet were part of that fame too.
There was also a Catholic revival at the time and some star preachers too. The church Notre Dame de Lorette was a hotspot for preachers. This trends reflects in The Red and the Black by Stendhal. During the Napoléon years, one could make a career in the military (the red) and now one could become famous in the Church. (the black)
These were also years for science, even if it wasn’t a passion for the French high society. They preferred literature. Manuscripts were read in Salons, not just excerpts, sometimes it could be a whole tragedy play! Imagine sitting down and suffering through five acts of a bad tragedy…
The last chapters were a lot easier to read as they were about theatre, music, horses, men’s circles (Jockey Club) and opera. We have a better knowledge of those through literature, especially Balzac. These are the premises of Lost Illusions. This leads to a last chapter about dandies, including a few paragraphs about Flaubert, Balzac and Baudelaire.
The Elegant Life by Anne Martin-Fugier was a tough read for me, especially the chapters about the royal courts and the chapters about politics. I knew a bit about political currents after reading Chateaubriand and Michel Winock’s book, about militant writers in the 19thc century but I’m not knowledgeable enough to follow everything Martin-Fugier wrote. I was glad that she zoomed on several persons like Guizot, Thiers, Rémuzat, James (Mayer) de Rothschild, Mme de Girardin or Mme Récamier.
When I finished the book, I had the feeling I’d just spent time in a vapid milieu. They spent their time organizing parties, rehearsing dance moves or theatre plays, playing matchmakers for their children and feeling full of themselves.
How could they not be bored with the futility of their endeavors? The worst were the parts about court etiquette. What stupid and stultifying rules they were. Useless ways to enforce a royal power which needed the rigidity of these fake respect to the king and the protocol.
At the same time, they nurtured the arts and helped artists, they praised academicians and were interested in humanities, even it was only in surface for most of them. They were involved in politics, directly or indirectly. But all this was possible because they were filthy rich and did their best to stay rich.
I am fascinated with the 19th century because all the roots of the today’s capitalism are in these years. Fortunes were made through new ways and new industries. A new order appeared. New social classes emerged with the raise of the bourgeoisie, the development of mines and factories that needed workers.
Even if I struggled with this book, I’m tempted to read three other ones by her, one about the Salons in the Third Republic (hello Proust!), the importance of maids in Paris in 1900 or family life in the 19th century among the bourgeoisie. She also wrote books about being an artist in the 19th century. Don’t they sound fascinating?
Heaven Has No Favorites by Erich Maria Remarque – my second read for the #1961Club
Heaven Has No Favorites by Erich Maria Remarque (1961) French title: Le ciel n’a pas de préférés. Translated by Dominique Auclères.
Heaven Has No Favorites by Erich Maria Remarque is my second read for Karen and Simon’s #1961Club. It seems to be OOP in French, I have a used copy published in 1964 by the Cercle du Bibliophile. Maybe we should mourn these mainstream publishers that worked as clubs and sent a book per quarter to a wide range of readers all over the country. They spread literature in their own way.
The book is set in 1948, mostly in France and Italy.
Clerfayt is a racing driver and when the book opens, he’s on his way to a sanatorium in Switzerland to visit with his friend and teammate Hollman who’s treated for tuberculosis. He’s upset because another racer just died in an accident during a race and it reminded him how dangerous his racing is.
At the sanatorium, he meets Liliane, a young woman who is a the sanatorium too. She’s also upset because her friend and fellow patient has just died from her illness. She reflects that at the sanatorium, the staff never say that someone died but that someone is gone. Liliane’s latest X-Ray isn’t good, she knows she won’t recover and decides to make the best of her last months on this earth. She doesn’t want to wait for her death in the bland environment of the sanatorium.
Clerfayt and Liliane sneak out of the sanatorium to have drinks, to dance and mingle to the crowd who’s vacationing in the nearby ski station. Then she leaves with Clerfayt who gives her a lift to Paris where her uncle Gaston lives. She takes a room in a hotel and starts visiting couture houses to buy beautiful dresses. She and Clerfayt start going out and travel together to the Riviera, to Sicily or Paris.
She’s gone from the sanatorium too, in her way and on her conditions.
Liliane picked Clerfayt as a companion because she was attracted to him but also because he’s a womanizer and she doesn’t want to be with a man who’d want to marry her or focus on her health. Liliane wants fun, life, parties, beautiful dresses and enjoy life. Clerfayt is the perfect companion for her.
Clerfayt lives a transient life, going from one race track to the other, earning his money on the tracks, spending it as recklessly as he lives. He flirts with death each time he sits into his race car. The probability of dying or being injured on the track is very high. Each race is a gamble with death. Clerfayt is a survivor of concentration camps. We’re in 1948, it’s still very fresh and it influences his vision of life’s worth.
What started as a fling with a dolce vita vibe turns into a genuine and tragic love story.
Remarque questions our constant relationship with death. The contrast between Liliane and Clerfayt is striking. She wants to live and has death hovering over her and she has no say about it. Clerfayt chooses to taunt death like a torero with a bull in an arena. He puts himself in danger, willingly, perhaps nagged by survivor guilt.
Liliane and Clerfayt walk on the same path as long as they are aligned with burning the midnight oil together. But what if one of them starts to care?
Remarque shows Liliane and Clerfayt with their strength, their lust for life and their inner fault lines. We see that Liliane’s death is unfair and we could be angry at Clerfayt for risking his life the way he does when Liliane doesn’t have the luxury to gamble hers. What choices do we really have in life? Remarque never judges Clerfayt and leaves the reader to make his own mind about his two characters and their whirlwind spring and summer.
During the whole book I kept picturing Clerfayt as Jean-Louis Trintignant and Liliane as Anouk Aimée. I checked out, A Man and a Woman went out in 1966, after this book was published. I watched Lelouch’s film a long time ago and mostly remembered Deauville, the characters in a car and beautiful scenes on the beach. When I looked it up, I realized that Trintignant was a racing driver too and that the Monte Carlo race is both in the movie and in Remarque’s book. Memory is a funny thing.
Besides the characters and my recurring vision of them as Trintignant and Aimée, the dialogues in the book really sound like French films of the 1960s. It felt like a very French book, probably because the characters are enjoying the Parisian high life with couture dresses and clubs, then enjoy the French Riviera and live a rather glamorous life in hotels.
Lucky English speaking readers : Heaven Has no Favorites is not OOP in English. Highly recommended.
Book Around the Corner 
