Albertine Sarrazin: La Cavale | Runaway (1965)

On the face of it this should be a fascinating read: Albertine Sarrazin, famous for her criminal activities and for escaping from Doullens, breaking a bone in her ankle, being rescued by an ex-con (Julien Sarrazin) who finds several planques for her, plus the very interesting novelised version of her exploits in L'Astragale, the astragal being the ankle bone in question. And both novels were translated, although not, it seems, her third: La Traversière.

Unfortunately I didn't like this novel, over five hundred pages of tiny print to reveal what exactly? There haven't been many novels set entirely (well, almost) in prison, and obviously what we're reading here is very close to the reality of the prison life that Albertine Sarrazin –here called Anick – must have experienced. That's a plus, as are the many slang expressions that add a rich colour to the book, and most of which in their time must have been culled from prison life. So, a realistic depiction certainly, and certainly the boredom is more than adequately conveyed. And that's the problem: it's so well conveyed that the reader – well, this one at least – is bored too.

The book is divided into three more or less equal parts relating to the different penal institutions in which they're set, although they all tend to merge into one. We have the dirt, the endless waiting, endless hopes of escape and/or being released, the many letters bringing hope, the chores, the cups of coffee, the subferfuges, the chumminess of the inmates, the smoking and saving of nub ends, the reading and card games of belote to kill time, etc, etc. The monotony is sometimes broken with the occasional celebration, buying beer from the prison shop, or when Anick is allowed out to marry Zizi (Julien) and gets drunk, but there is nowhere near enough variety to same the novel. Which is very sad.

My Albertine Sarrazin posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Albertine Sarrazin: La Cavale | Runaway
Jacques Layani: Albertine Sarrazin : une vie
Albertine Sarrazin: L'Astragale | Astragal
Albertine Sarrazin in Doullens, Somme

Jean Teulé: L'Œil de Pâques (1992)

L'Œil de Pâques is Jean Teulé's second novel, and is far from being his best. It begins fifteen million years ago, then cycles closer and closer to the  present until it begins the story proper about halfway through. Up to then we encounter many recurring words and themes, one of the main ones being Calais and the Channel tunnel, which incidentally was first mooted (but without success) to Napoleon in 1805 by the engineer Albert Mathieu-Favier: and there are his designs of it online to prove it.

It would take a long time to say what it's about, so instead I'll try to describe some of the characters and action. Pâque is the central character and she escapes from her hippie mother, who is French but living in India, but thinks she's being spiritual by giving herself sexually to the locals: towards the end she realises that she's just being used and blows up herself and about a hundred Tamils. Stainer is the cop who's hopelessly corrupt and steals a fair amount of the cannabis he confiscates, who fires a gun repeatedly at his damp walls to get rid of his frustration, and who lets Louis off a potential murder charge because he can fix his walls. Lucy teaches Pâque music, but she's out of her mind, living on seven eggs a day and polishing her gold and silver, which she hides in a drawer – she also has twenty-seven locks on her flat door. Those are just a few of the eccentrics. It was only on reading this book that I realised that obsession is a major theme in Jean Teulé's work.

The novel is almost entirely set in Calais and just a few of the repeated words, which underline continuity, form linkages, etc, are 'Simple Vice', which is a river and also the name of Pâque's (and her half-brother Thomas's) father: yes, I've not made a mistake there; Stainer's damp-swollen walls can be twinned with Pâque's silicon-swollen lips; the name Lucy relates to the Beatles 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' (or LSD, as drugs are frequent here); Pâque's nails are maquillés, and on two occasions Teulé uses his own expression 'made up like an English woman'; etc.

Looking at some of the reviews of this novel I can understand why it confused some people: it's far too clever for its own good.

My Jean Teulé posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Jean Teulé: L'Œil de Pâques
Jean Teulé: Le Montespan | Monsieur Montespan
Jean Teulé: Le Magasin des suicides | Suicide Shop

Antoine Blondin: Monsieur jadis ou l'école du soir (1970)

Antoine Blondin was not part of a school, although he is generally associated with the Hussard writers, right-wing and anti-Sartre. Regarding Blondin's politics, though, he said in a conversation with Serge Gainsbourg in a bar (available on YouTube) that the right considered him left, but the left thought him right. It was Bernard Franck who gave them this title, and the other three Hussards are Roger Nimier (who 'provided' the name with his novel Le Hussard bleu), Jacques Laurent and Michel Déon.

For many years, Blondin was a very well-known character around Saint-Germain-des-Prés, mainly for his relentless drinking, and for his resulting antics, such as playing at 'bull-fighting' with oncoming cars. He was also well-known to the police, who arrested him on a number of occasions, and as well as novels also wrote for L'Équipe sports paper.

Monsieur jadis ou l'école du soir is a kind of autobiography. I say 'kind of' because it's all over the place, it's an opportunity for Blondin to give a fine display of his verbal pyrotechnics. It's difficult to describe because the novel has no plot, being the memories of a fiftysomething's behaviour years ago, including the disagreements with his wife, but mainly the many bars he went to (particularly the ever-open Bar-Bac (also known as 'chez Blanche') on rue du Bac. Roger Nimier also features strongly in the novel, as in the episode when he agrees to help Blondin out financially when he can't pay his taxi fare. Other writers who make an appearance are Albert Vidalie (of whom the eldest daughter was Blondin's god-daughter) and Giulio Cesare Silvagni. A crazy but brilliant man, and a fascinating book.

My Antoine Blondin posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Antoine Blondin and Pierre Assouline: Le Flâneur de la rive gauche
Antoine Blondin: Monsieur jadis ou l'école du soir
Antoine Blondin: Les enfants du bon Dieu

Marie Nimier: La Reine du silence (2004)

Marie Nimier's story of her search for her father is in effect a search for herself too. Prominent writer Roger Nimier died in an Aston Martin in 1962. It is quite possible that the beautiful Sunsiaré de Larcône, who also died in the crash and had just published her first novel, was driving the car. La Reine du silence strives to pull together the various and many pieces of a jigsaw in an attempt to discover the mystery of Marie's father, who died when she was only five.

Marie Nimier tries to draw on the obviously very limited memories that she has of her father, makes investigations, questions people who knew him, makes many digressions and speculations, but gradually – through the various snippets of information that she finds – she arrives at truths that are far from comforting.

Along the way we learn of her paternal grandfather Paul Nimier being an engineer who devised the first talking clock, of her paternal grandmother Christiane Roussel being a violinist before her marriage. We also learn that, after several failed tests, Marie eventually gained a full driving licence. We never learn why, at twenty-five, she jumped into the Seine in a suicide attempt, but then she doesn't know either.

Roger Nimier was a heavy drinker and sometimes did things that are very odd and disturbing, such as holding a gun to her slightly older brother's head, or stubbing out a cigarette in the plastic yoke of the egg in Marie children's tea set. There were rows with his wife, whom he once grabbed round the throat, and they were getting divorced at the time of his death.

The worse blow for Marie, though, is when she sees some of her father's possessions being auctioned. After seeing a letter he's written using a pseudonym and pretending to be a manufacturer of dildos, she reads this about herself at the end of another letter:

'By the way, Nadine had a daughter yesterday.

I immediately went to drown her in the Seine so as not to hear her anymore.

See you soon, I hope.

                                    Roger Nimier'

In a postcard once, Roger wrote to Marie: 'WHAT DOES THE QUEEN OF SILENCE SAY?'

Of course, if the 'queen of silence' says anything, she'll no longer be the queen of silence. So Marie Nimier chooses to write.

An amazing book.

My Marie Nimier posts:
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Marie Nimier: La Reine du silence
Marie Nimier: La Girafe | The Giraffe

Samira Bellil: Dans l'enfer des tournantes | To Hell and Back: the life of Samira Bellil (2002)

Once again, I'm not too happy with the title in translation of a book: why To Hell and Back : the life of Samira Bellil? The original title translates as 'In the hell of gang rape' (in the slang that very much dominates this work), so something like 'Gang Rape Hell' would seem more appropriate to me. Sigh.

And this true account of a horrific life certainly makes the reader sigh. Josée Stoquart assisted with the book at every stage of its writing, and although it's unclear to what extent she changed it, it evidently resounds with Samira Bellil's voice, a voice speaking from hell, in the language of the street, about her life until she was twenty-seven.

Coming from a family in which the mother is initially intimidated, ruled over even, by the father who treats Samira in a terrible fashion, as an adolescent she doesn't really stand much chance in life. At fourteen she is savagely raped by three men who live nearby, and later by the same leader of the gang, K. She is threatened with violent consequences if she goes to the police, and anyway she can't even tell her parents because they wouldn't be sympathetic, they would be ashamed of her. On holiday in Algeria with her mother, Samira was gang raped again.

Her troubles don't end there, and it seems that every step she makes towards a relatively contented existence, she takes two steps back, and the toll this takes on her mental health is bound to be high. However, she can fight back, and positive things happen: she gets successful psychological help, her mother divorces, a judge awards her financial compensation, and she publishes this widely read book in 2002.

Tragically, Samira Bellil died of stomach cancer in 2004 – at the age of thirty-one.

Samira Bellil's grave in Père-Lachaise.

Jeanne Benameur: Ça t'apprendra à vivre (1989)

This is Jeanne Benameur's first novel, and is partly autobiographical: it describes the world through the eyes of a young child, like Benameur of mixed parents (the father Algerian, the mother Italian but speaking French) first in Algeria and then in a town on the Atlantic coast: Benameur's family moved from Algeria to La Rochelle during the Algerian war.

The initial pages of this short novel are concerned with the young girl's memories of Algeria in 1958, of the family's fears and the danger of its isolation because of its ambiguous status: this is a mixed marriage and the children are of mixed blood. When the family moves to France the narrator, although no longer in obvious danger, still feels like an outsider: she's ignored by her school companions because she has no exotic tales to tell of Algeria. Her defence is to lie.

Lying is one of the themes of the book, which is addressed to individual members of the family: most of it, unusually, is written in the 'tu' form. And a number of the very short chapters on her parents are negative: the mother stealing from a supermarket, the father beating the children, rowing with his wife, and visiting a prostitute.

What most impressed me was the vividness, the intensely realistic nature of the language which seeks to convey the ultra-sensitivity of the girl. For instance, I translate here the description of (an unknown) food cooking in a frying pan:

'It hisses it shudders it simmers.

The whole kitchen is occupied by the sounds. Tiny boiling bubbles come together in the middle of the pan. From time to time, it spits. A bubble bursts, tiny blisters spurt, explode above the fire.'

Similarly, watching a bowl of white coffee form a skin is minutely described, or eating a pomegranate, etc. I shall be reading more of Jeanne Benameur's work.

San-Antonio: Des dragées sans baptême (1975)

Yes, Des dragées sans baptême is another San-Antonio, or Frédéric Dard, which means that it's a cops and robbers story, starring San-Antonio himself as the commissaire superman, who has a super brain, a larger-than-life ability to take any knocks they are handed out to him, and no matter what he might look like after his ordeals he always manages to get a beautiful young woman drooling over him.

As ever in San-Antonio's world of cartoon violence, for me at least – although I suspect for many more readers – it's not so much the plot that matters as the way it's told, and San-Antonio wouldn't be San-Antonio if his books weren't littered with many humorous familiar and slang expressions, some of which are of course invented.

Thinking (mainly in American) cops-and-robber vein, it's obvious that 'gat' for gun is soufflant, feu, crachoir, or  pétard here, 'stiff' (as in dead body) is maccabe, and 'peepers' can serve for mirettes or châsses. But I was unable to find a catch-out slang term for 'car' to match San-Antonio's traction, guinde, or bagnole; I couldn't even think of a slang word for 'bullet' to match dragée, prune or pastille.

San-Antonio is also noted for his amusing expressions and wisecracks, and in this novel we have 'The door is as full of [bullet] holes as a chestnut seller's pan'. When San-Antonio is knocked out by a gangster's truncheon, he says 'I dip my head in the angels' swimming pool'. When his boss treats San-Antonio to toast, coffee and rum in his office after his daring feats are over, the sleuth drinks a bowl of coffee, then half fills it with rum, and when his boss asks if he's gonna drink that, San-Antonio asks if he thinks gonna wash his feet in it.

This was first published in 1975, although I'm still surprised that the language is so coy: shit is described as the stuff dogs leave behind, or le mot de Cambronne, which according to the non-coy Victor Hugo in the 19th century epic Les Misérables was merde !

My Frédéric Dard posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Joséphine Dard: Frédéric Dard, mon père: San-Antonio
Jean Durieux: Frédéric Dard dit San-Antonio
San-Antonio: Certaines l'aiment chauve
San-Antonio: Messieurs les hommes
San-Antonio: Des dragées sans baptême

Marguerite Duras: Les Impudents (1943)

Les Impudents is Marguerite Duras's first novel, one she came to see as 'very bad' and went to the extent of deleting it from her list of writings, although it is still in print. Laure Adler, Duras's biographer, points to its many infelicities, and it is certainly not always an easy ride: it contains much of the material Duras used to rail against. In parts I found it a little like attempting to wade through treacherous water, although perhaps that strays too far towards some of the metaphorical expressions Duras herself uses. In one by no means isolated sentence, for instance, the narrator speaks of a pine wood 'high as a church nave' and a river 'sinking like a knife into the bottom of the meadows'. Another wince–worthy sentence that came to my attention is 'The heat stagnated around the house, like a pond.' Umm.

Nevertheless, in spite of its many faults, Les Impudents carries the germ of Duras's later writings: thematically – listlessness, the torments of love, desire, suicide, lies, among many other things; and autobiographically, there's a mother particularly in love with her greedy and workshy wastrel son, plus a home in the south-west, near where Duras (who took her name from a village there) spent two of her childhood years.

Maud Grand is twenty, from a bourgeois family, and lives in Clamart (Hauts-de-Seine) with her mother Mme Tanerand, her forty-year-old brother Jacques (the wastrel), her half-brother Henri and her her step-father M Tanerand. Apart from her father who stays in their appartment in Paris, the family go to their property in Uderan, but it's now uninhabitable as they haven't stayed there for some years. Consequently they stay with the rich peasant family, the Pecresses, the mother of whom is keen to see her son Jean married off to Maud. This is not to be though, and after many events – the suicide of a girl both Jean and Jacques appear to have had a strong part in, the gossip and the shame Maud brings upon herself by shacking up for a few weeks with the essentially very respectable and caring Georges Durieux – the pregnant Maud marries Georges. Who said Duras doesn't do happy endings?

My Marguerite Duras posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Marguerite Duras: La Pute de la côte normande
Marguerite Duras: L'Homme assis dans le couloir
Marguerite Duras: Agatha
Marguerite Duras: Emily L.
Marguerite Duras: Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs
Marguerite Duras: L'Amant | The Lover
Marguerite Duras: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein
Marguerite Duras: L'Amante anglaise
Laure Adler: Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras: Cimetière du Montparnasse
Marguerite Duras: Un barrage contre le Pacifique
Marguerite Duras: L'Après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas
Marguerite Duras: Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia
Marguerite Duras: Le Marin de Gibraltar | The Sailor from Gibraltar
Marguerite Duras: La Douleur | The War: A Memoir
Yann Andréa: Cet amour-là
Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier: Les Parleuses
Marguerite Duras: Savannah Bay
Marguerite Duras: Détruire, dit-elle | Destroy, She Said
Marguerite Duras: L'Amour
Marguerite Duras: Dix heures et demie du soir en été
Marguerite Duras: Le Square | The Square
Marguerite Duras: Les Impudents
Marguerite Duras: Le Shaga
Marguerite Duras: Oui, peut-être
Marguerite Duras: Des journées entières dans les arbres
Marguerite Duras: Suzanna Andler
Marguerite Duras: Le Vice-Consul | The Vice Consul
Marguerite Duras: Moderato cantabile
Marguerite Duras: La Vie matérielle
Marguerite Duras: La Vie tranquille
Marguerite Duras: La Pluie d'été

Marguerite Duras: Le Shaga (1968)

Le Shaga is another of Marguerite Duras's rare humorous writings, and again it's distinctly Beckettian, reducing language here to absurdity. She was especially interested in idées reçues. Here we have three people in the grounds of a psychiatric hospital, where overnight B has started speaking a foreign language: Shaga, which is not a real language but one spoken by her alone. Neither A (also a woman) nor H (a man) can understand her, but A begins to find meanings increasingly quickly, interpreting them for H. There is much repetition, much laughter, even singing and dancing, and we realise how 'catching' the use of language is, how easy it is to adopt phrases and mannerisms in a kind of sympathy with it.

Some parts of the play I found particularly amusing. For instance, B shows interest in H's jerrycan with holes in. H says: 'As soon as you put petrol in it it leaves it. [...] and the jerrycan goes back to what it was before, you see, it's not worth the trouble of putting petrol in...because it doesn't remain. [...]. You put petrol in and it's not worth the trouble, so....' A repeats, 'it's not worth the trouble of putting any in..' (Duras italicises the cliché.) Adding to the craziness, H  adds a nonsense story of a woman who lived in a house with holes in who couldn't live in it until people came to put bars to the holes to stop her falling out of it.

Duras called her play 'a transgression'. Yes, although the most transgressive thing I found about it was how very close the inane, repetitive, and – it has to be said – crazy language used here by the insane is to the casual, meaningless, inconsequential language used by people we wouldn't hesitate to call, er, 'normal', well-balanced people: those we come across and talk to every day. Frightening: so in effect we're laughing at ourselves, at how stupid, or crazy, we are?

My Marguerite Duras posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Marguerite Duras: La Pute de la côte normande
Marguerite Duras: L'Homme assis dans le couloir
Marguerite Duras: Agatha
Marguerite Duras: Emily L.
Marguerite Duras: Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs
Marguerite Duras: L'Amant | The Lover
Marguerite Duras: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein
Marguerite Duras: L'Amante anglaise
Laure Adler: Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras: Cimetière du Montparnasse
Marguerite Duras: Un barrage contre le Pacifique
Marguerite Duras: L'Après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas
Marguerite Duras: Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia
Marguerite Duras: Le Marin de Gibraltar | The Sailor from Gibraltar
Marguerite Duras: La Douleur | The War: A Memoir
Yann Andréa: Cet amour-là
Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier: Les Parleuses
Marguerite Duras: Savannah Bay
Marguerite Duras: Détruire, dit-elle | Destroy, She Said
Marguerite Duras: L'Amour
Marguerite Duras: Dix heures et demie du soir en été
Marguerite Duras: Le Square | The Square
Marguerite Duras: Les Impudents
Marguerite Duras: Le Shaga
Marguerite Duras: Oui, peut-être
Marguerite Duras: Des journées entières dans les arbres
Marguerite Duras: Suzanna Andler
Marguerite Duras: Le Vice-Consul | The Vice Consul
Marguerite Duras: Moderato cantabile
Marguerite Duras: La Vie matérielle
Marguerite Duras: La Vie tranquille
Marguerite Duras: La Pluie d'été

Marguerite Duras: Yes, peut-être (1968)

Yes, peut-être is one of only three works of Marguerite Duras's which are humorous, the other two being Eaux et Forêts and Le Shaga. This, though, is also a work of science fiction. Set in a near future, it represents a post-apocalyse and is feminist and anti-military.

The landscape is bare and we are in a kind of desert after a war, a nuclear attack, of which there are hardly any survivors. Two women meet, one dragging behind her a wreck of a man, someone between life and death after a military experience. They all have anti-radiactivity devices on their arms.

The action, such as it is, is Beckettian. The language is mainly in phrases as the women have lost their memory: they don't remember what has happened to them, but they largely remember their language and struggle to express themselves, but often using groups of words without a personal pronoun, or mixing the pronouns, throwing in the occasional non-French word or religious term. The man, who lies on the ground most of the time because of serious problems standing up, has a vocabulary of only a few words, and mostly makes incoherent noises.

My Marguerite Duras posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Marguerite Duras: La Pute de la côte normande
Marguerite Duras: L'Homme assis dans le couloir
Marguerite Duras: Agatha
Marguerite Duras: Emily L.
Marguerite Duras: Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs
Marguerite Duras: L'Amant | The Lover
Marguerite Duras: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein
Marguerite Duras: L'Amante anglaise
Laure Adler: Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras: Cimetière du Montparnasse
Marguerite Duras: Un barrage contre le Pacifique
Marguerite Duras: L'Après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas
Marguerite Duras: Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia
Marguerite Duras: Le Marin de Gibraltar | The Sailor from Gibraltar
Marguerite Duras: La Douleur | The War: A Memoir
Yann Andréa: Cet amour-là
Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier: Les Parleuses
Marguerite Duras: Savannah Bay
Marguerite Duras: Détruire, dit-elle | Destroy, She Said
Marguerite Duras: L'Amour
Marguerite Duras: Dix heures et demie du soir en été
Marguerite Duras: Le Square | The Square
Marguerite Duras: Les Impudents
Marguerite Duras: Le Shaga
Marguerite Duras: Oui, peut-être
Marguerite Duras: Des journées entières dans les arbres
Marguerite Duras: Suzanna Andler
Marguerite Duras: Le Vice-Consul | The Vice Consul
Marguerite Duras: Moderato cantabile
Marguerite Duras: La Vie matérielle
Marguerite Duras: La Vie tranquille
Marguerite Duras: La Pluie d'été

Marguerite Duras: Des journées entières dans les arbres (1968)

Marguerite Duras's Des journées entières dans les arbres is in some respects a re-visitation of the mother and the elder brother seen in Un barrage contre le Pacifique and L'Amant, but at a much later period and set in Paris rather than Indochina.

A very old and somewhat demented woman has taken the plane from the Far East to visit her son for a final time. She believes she's rich although, unbeknown to her, her factory (employing over eighty workers) has recently been taken over by the state and her daughter forced to work as a property agent. Her workshy, avaricious and gambling addict son (in his forties) lives with Marcelle, a younger woman who works in a night club and prostitutes herself to customers. The mother gives her son a bundle of money and Marcelle some money to fetch some food because she's starving – in fact she can't stop eating.

They all go to the night club later and the mother disgraces herself by getting drunk on champagne and then causing a huge fuss over what she considers is an excessively high bill. She returns home with Marcelle while the son stays at the club to squander the money his mother's given him, and his mother takes the plane back home.

My Marguerite Duras posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Marguerite Duras: La Pute de la côte normande
Marguerite Duras: L'Homme assis dans le couloir
Marguerite Duras: Agatha
Marguerite Duras: Emily L.
Marguerite Duras: Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs
Marguerite Duras: L'Amant | The Lover
Marguerite Duras: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein
Marguerite Duras: L'Amante anglaise
Laure Adler: Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras: Cimetière du Montparnasse
Marguerite Duras: Un barrage contre le Pacifique
Marguerite Duras: L'Après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas
Marguerite Duras: Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia
Marguerite Duras: Le Marin de Gibraltar | The Sailor from Gibraltar
Marguerite Duras: La Douleur | The War: A Memoir
Yann Andréa: Cet amour-là
Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier: Les Parleuses
Marguerite Duras: Savannah Bay
Marguerite Duras: Détruire, dit-elle | Destroy, She Said
Marguerite Duras: L'Amour
Marguerite Duras: Dix heures et demie du soir en été
Marguerite Duras: Le Square | The Square
Marguerite Duras: Les Impudents
Marguerite Duras: Le Shaga
Marguerite Duras: Oui, peut-être
Marguerite Duras: Des journées entières dans les arbres
Marguerite Duras: Suzanna Andler
Marguerite Duras: Le Vice-Consul | The Vice Consul
Marguerite Duras: Moderato cantabile
Marguerite Duras: La Vie matérielle
Marguerite Duras: La Vie tranquille
Marguerite Duras: La Pluie d'été

Marguerite Duras: Suzanna Andler (1968)

Suzanna Andler has very few characters: the eponymous protagonist (about forty); her present lover Michel Cayre (thirty or thirty-five and married); very briefly,  her friend (and once one of her husband's many lovers, Monique Combès; and Rivière the estate agent. The place is Saint Tropez and Suzanna is deciding if she wants to rent a property for the month of August.

Her husband Jean will have the last say in the matter, and price isn't really important to him. But we only encounter him once, just his voice over the phone, and he won't be staying in the property long: their marriage is more or less in name only, held together by their children in their home in Paris, while he drifts from one relationship to the next. But he makes sure Suzanna is (reasonably) comfortable.

What comes over here are the usual preoccupations of Duras: lies, extramarital relationships, despair, suicide, death, madness, the family, etc. But we are a very long way from her experimental cycle indien.

Marguerite Duras called Suzanna a woman of the world, a person who greatly interested her but whom she had never seen in person, only at a distance in restaurants on the Nationale 7 (near the Côte d'Azur). She is hidden behind her bourgeois class, conventions, idées reçues, etc. Here, she's released in Saint Tropez, but without all the the familial and general social trappings, and she is exposed to pain, despair, and, Duras adds, even death.

My Marguerite Duras posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Marguerite Duras: La Pute de la côte normande
Marguerite Duras: L'Homme assis dans le couloir
Marguerite Duras: Agatha
Marguerite Duras: Emily L.
Marguerite Duras: Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs
Marguerite Duras: L'Amant | The Lover
Marguerite Duras: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein
Marguerite Duras: L'Amante anglaise
Laure Adler: Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras: Cimetière du Montparnasse
Marguerite Duras: Un barrage contre le Pacifique
Marguerite Duras: L'Après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas
Marguerite Duras: Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia
Marguerite Duras: Le Marin de Gibraltar | The Sailor from Gibraltar
Marguerite Duras: La Douleur | The War: A Memoir
Yann Andréa: Cet amour-là
Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier: Les Parleuses
Marguerite Duras: Savannah Bay
Marguerite Duras: Détruire, dit-elle | Destroy, She Said
Marguerite Duras: L'Amour
Marguerite Duras: Dix heures et demie du soir en été
Marguerite Duras: Le Square | The Square
Marguerite Duras: Les Impudents
Marguerite Duras: Le Shaga
Marguerite Duras: Oui, peut-être
Marguerite Duras: Des journées entières dans les arbres
Marguerite Duras: Suzanna Andler
Marguerite Duras: Le Vice-Consul | The Vice Consul
Marguerite Duras: Moderato cantabile
Marguerite Duras: La Vie matérielle
Marguerite Duras: La Vie tranquille
Marguerite Duras: La Pluie d'été

Denis Tillinac: Caractériel (2018)

Denis Tillinac was born in Paris, although his heart is in the département of Corrèze, more particularly in the small (pop. about 200) village of Auriac ('Terilhac' in the novel) about forty-five miles from Brive, a major town in Corrèze. He lives in Auriac and writes his books from here, several of which are set in Corrèze, such as his first novel, Spleen en Corrèze (1979) and La Corrèze et le Zambèze (1990) – Africa, like Haiti and its paintings, he is also very interested in.

In this autobiographical novel – in which the Corrèze is heaven and Paris (apart from, for instance, the area where the métro in Bel Air emerges from the underground to join daylight) is hell. The narrator lives for the summer holidays, when he can leave Paris (where his father works as a dentist) and go to Auriac. There, he has friends he can relate more to, where he can use localisms without feeling clumsy, and where he can be in tune with the wildlife, the birds and the flowers.

The title, Caractériel, relates to the narrator being considered disturbed, or névrosé (neurotic) by psychiatrists and psychologists he's sent to. He's considered a cancre ('dunce') at school, which he hates, and will seek any reasonable (well, sometimes his thinking is very unreasonable) means of escaping, including running away, or even putting a knife through the bicycle tyre of a teacher who quite sympathises with him. The other pole of his paradise is 'Bercilly', where his maternal grandparents live.

Tillinac hated school because of its discipline, and describes himself as 'transgressive', which may seem contradictory for a politically conservative person. But there's a distinct revolt against growing up here, which called my mind such writers as Alexandre Vialatte and Amélie Nothomb.

Marguerite Duras: Le Vice-Consul | The ViceConsul (1966)

This is the second of Marguerite Duras's cycle indien, which consists of four novels: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein (1964), Le Vice‑Consul (1966), L’Amour (1971) and India Song (1973), plus three films: La Femme du Gange (1973), India Song (1975) and Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert (1976). Duras wrote this over many hours in eight months and at a very emotional time. It is shot through with despair and loss.

Essentially there are two themes here: that of the young woman thrown out by her mother for being pregnant, and ending up begging on the street, hopelessly mad. Duras obviously had in mind the beggar she met in Vietnam who had such an effect on her. Hopelessly mad too we might say is Jean-Marc de H, the French vice-consul formerly of Lahore, but after shooting at lepers and dogs he is nw awaiting decision to be made of his new posting.

Also of great note is Anne-Marie Stretter, a character who appears in Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, who has a number of sexual relationships with some of the other ex-pats. But the gauche vice-consul is not for her, and he shrieks his bitter disappointment madly at a well-watered ball and has to be taken outside, although the film India Song differs strongly from this in that the ball continues with his constant haunting screaming of loss as a backcloth to the events of the ball.

This is a novel which contains many of the elements we recognise from Duras's other novels, such as dancing, poverty, lying, adultery, madness and desire.

My Marguerite Duras posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Marguerite Duras: La Pute de la côte normande
Marguerite Duras: L'Homme assis dans le couloir
Marguerite Duras: Agatha
Marguerite Duras: Emily L.
Marguerite Duras: Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs
Marguerite Duras: L'Amant | The Lover
Marguerite Duras: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein
Marguerite Duras: L'Amante anglaise
Laure Adler: Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras: Cimetière du Montparnasse
Marguerite Duras: Un barrage contre le Pacifique
Marguerite Duras: L'Après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas
Marguerite Duras: Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia
Marguerite Duras: Le Marin de Gibraltar | The Sailor from Gibraltar
Marguerite Duras: La Douleur | The War: A Memoir
Yann Andréa: Cet amour-là
Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier: Les Parleuses
Marguerite Duras: Savannah Bay
Marguerite Duras: Détruire, dit-elle | Destroy, She Said
Marguerite Duras: L'Amour
Marguerite Duras: Dix heures et demie du soir en été
Marguerite Duras: Le Square | The Square
Marguerite Duras: Les Impudents
Marguerite Duras: Le Shaga
Marguerite Duras: Oui, peut-être
Marguerite Duras: Des journées entières dans les arbres
Marguerite Duras: Suzanna Andler
Marguerite Duras: Le Vice-Consul | The Vice Consul
Marguerite Duras: Moderato cantabile
Marguerite Duras: La Vie matérielle
Marguerite Duras: La Vie tranquille
Marguerite Duras: La Pluie d'été

Marguerite Duras: Dix heures et demie du soir en été (1960)

Marguerite Duras's novel two years before this was Moderato cantabile, with which it shares two main points of interest: the female, married protagonist's alcoholism, and a crime passionnel.

Pierre, his wife Marie, their young child Judith and their friend Claire are at the beginning of a holiday in Spain when they are forced to stop continuing their way to Madrid because of a strong storm. They come to a packed hotel in a small town where the police are hunting for Rodrigo Paestra, who has killed both his nineteen-year-old wife and her lover.

Marie has already been drinking in the bar during the evening and late at night can't sleep and knows that there's a bottle of cognac in the car. At the same time, she has noticed the man she believes is Rodrigo Paestra hiding on the roof opposite the hotel balcony. She decides to rescue him, smuggling him in the car, and while he's sleeping taking large slugs from the bottle as she drives. She sees notices Paestra has a gun 'next to his sex': an interesting juxtaposition.

She drives Paestra fourteen kilometres out of the town, to a cornfield where she says she'll pick him up a twelve o'clock the following day, and then returns to the hotel. Marie, who has noticed that Pierre and Claire have become strongly attracted to each other, informs Pierre of her arrangement with Paestra. She finds the cornfield easily but also finds that Paestra has blown his skull off: suicide (or the thought of it) is common in Duras's literature. Time to continue on their journey to Madrid.

This they do, with a few stops on the way for Marie to top up her intake of manzanillas monopolise the wine pitcher. She falls asleep when they stop at a parador to eat, which allows Pierre and Claire the time to hire a room for an hour's 'siesta', and continue the holiday no doubt in a similar manner: Marie drowning her sorrows, and her husband continuing the relationship with Claire.

My Marguerite Duras posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Marguerite Duras: La Pute de la côte normande
Marguerite Duras: L'Homme assis dans le couloir
Marguerite Duras: Agatha
Marguerite Duras: Emily L.
Marguerite Duras: Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs
Marguerite Duras: L'Amant | The Lover
Marguerite Duras: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein
Marguerite Duras: L'Amante anglaise
Laure Adler: Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras: Cimetière du Montparnasse
Marguerite Duras: Un barrage contre le Pacifique
Marguerite Duras: L'Après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas
Marguerite Duras: Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia
Marguerite Duras: Le Marin de Gibraltar | The Sailor from Gibraltar
Marguerite Duras: La Douleur | The War: A Memoir
Yann Andréa: Cet amour-là
Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier: Les Parleuses
Marguerite Duras: Savannah Bay
Marguerite Duras: Détruire, dit-elle | Destroy, She Said
Marguerite Duras: L'Amour
Marguerite Duras: Dix heures et demie du soir en été
Marguerite Duras: Le Square | The Square
Marguerite Duras: Les Impudents
Marguerite Duras: Le Shaga
Marguerite Duras: Oui, peut-être
Marguerite Duras: Des journées entières dans les arbres
Marguerite Duras: Suzanna Andler
Marguerite Duras: Le Vice-Consul | The Vice Consul
Marguerite Duras: Moderato cantabile
Marguerite Duras: La Vie matérielle
Marguerite Duras: La Vie tranquille
Marguerite Duras: La Pluie d'été

Marguerite Duras: L'Amour (1971)

Marguerite Duras said that her novel L'Amour is 'a book that contains a hundred books, all the books I've written. And also others that other people could have written'. Certainly this will remind readers of her major work Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, but in particular the style of the much more obscure La Femme du Gange, of which I've only seen the film version so far.

The (imaginary) place S. Tahla of Le Ravissement becomes the equally imaginary S. Thala here, only it's set a number of years after the first novel, and S. Thala has been bombarded (by storms yes, but other things too?), there are fires, sirens, the sea has almost taken over, and the reader is almost all the time on the shoreline, with three mysterious figures: a pregnant woman, a walking man, and a traveller who's staying at a hotel and seems to be preparing himself for suicide.

No one has a name, unless S. Thala is the name of a person, or everyone, but that isn't at all clear, and probably just a throwaway remark made by the traveller. But yes, Duras's books, and especially Le Ravissement, are in here. The traveller has come back after a long time, which suggests Michael Richardson, who left the ballroom, walked out on Lol V. Stein, for the older Anne-Marie Stretter: he goes to a now unused ballroom he visited long ago, and asks the attendant if he remembers the woman on the beach, but she's too far away for recognition.

And how many women are present here, or are we reading about the same one at different times? There's the pregnant woman on the beach, the one the traveller visits in her house, the one who visits him in his hotel room with their(?) two children in the lobby, and the woman (a different one?) on the beach, who recognises the traveller, who has had two children by another man, a musician, and could well be Lol V. Stein. Pick up some pieces, try to fit them together, but you won't manage it: Marguerite Duras's book leaves a great deal for the reader to sort out, indeed invent.

My Marguerite Duras posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Marguerite Duras: La Pute de la côte normande
Marguerite Duras: L'Homme assis dans le couloir
Marguerite Duras: Agatha
Marguerite Duras: Emily L.
Marguerite Duras: Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs
Marguerite Duras: L'Amant | The Lover
Marguerite Duras: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein
Marguerite Duras: L'Amante anglaise
Laure Adler: Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras: Cimetière du Montparnasse
Marguerite Duras: Un barrage contre le Pacifique
Marguerite Duras: L'Après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas
Marguerite Duras: Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia
Marguerite Duras: Le Marin de Gibraltar | The Sailor from Gibraltar
Marguerite Duras: La Douleur | The War: A Memoir
Yann Andréa: Cet amour-là
Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier: Les Parleuses
Marguerite Duras: Savannah Bay
Marguerite Duras: Détruire, dit-elle | Destroy, She Said
Marguerite Duras: L'Amour
Marguerite Duras: Dix heures et demie du soir en été
Marguerite Duras: Le Square | The Square
Marguerite Duras: Les Impudents
Marguerite Duras: Le Shaga
Marguerite Duras: Oui, peut-être
Marguerite Duras: Des journées entières dans les arbres
Marguerite Duras: Suzanna Andler
Marguerite Duras: Le Vice-Consul | The Vice Consul
Marguerite Duras: Moderato cantabile
Marguerite Duras: La Vie matérielle
Marguerite Duras: La Vie tranquille
Marguerite Duras: La Pluie d'été