Sorj Chalandon: Retour à Killybegs | Return to Killybegs (2011)

Sorj Chalandon used to be a journalist for the daily paper Libération, specialising in particular in reporting on the problems in Northern Ireland. He wrote the novel Mon traître in 2008, which was inspired by his friendship with Denis Donaldson (1950–2006), a staunch member of the IRA and Sinn Féin who became a British agent. In Mon traître a French character (obviously based on Chalandon himself) named Antoine Chalons – a luthier, or maker of stringed instruments – appears as a friend of Tyrone Meehan's. In 2011 Chalandon returned to the subject with Retour à Killybegs (translated as Return to Killybegs), another fictionalised account of Chalandon's Story, although whereas Mon traître is narrated by Antoine, Retour à Killybegs is narrated by Tyrone, who was born in 1925 and died in 2007.

The structure of the book is in two essential parts: chapters that run more or less chronologically from the 1920s to 2007, interspersed with far fewer and much shorter chapters from 24 December 2006 – when Tyrone returns to his empty family home in Killybegs, where his strongly Republican father used to take out his frustrations on other people (and animals), but mainly Tyrone – to 3 April 2007, when Tyrone is murdered by a Republican group opposed to the peace process. (In reality the Real IRA admitted to the murder, although this name is not mentioned in the novel.)

This is to some extent a violent and gruesome book, beginning with Tyrone's father Padraig's beatings of him, through the general violence in Ireland at the time, the beatings of prisoners by the wardens, the prisoner's protests at not being treated as political prisoners, refusing to wear prison uniform and not washing, smearing their own shit on the walls, a hunger strike in the background, etc.

But the main thrust of the story is about Tyrone's betrayal of the political organisation he lived for: he has accidentally killed Danny, one of his friends, during a shoot-out with the opposition, MI5 have the bullets to prove and to broadcast the fact, and (by indirectly threatening his son and his wife) blackmail him into becoming an informant. There is really no way he can turn the offer down. But come the ceasefire and the setting up of the peace process, Tyrone's role as traitor will out, and his return to Killybegs, he knows, is a return to death. Chalandon makes Tyrone eighty-one here, although he (the real Denis Donaldson, that is) was of course much younger.

Retour à Killybegs is a compelling read, and received the Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française for 2011. I can't say that I've seen the excellent cover before, but this edition comes from'Le Grand Livre du Mois' book club, which I found in a book exchange depot.

My other Sorj Chalandon posts:
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Sorj Chalandon: Profession du père
Sorj Chalandon: La Légende de nos pères

Sorj Chalandon: Profession du père (2015)

Sorj Chalandon's Profession du père is a staggering work, so powerful that indeed it would scarcely be possible to imagine it as a work of pure fiction, rather than a work of auto-fiction, the true blending in with the false. In some ways, too, it is in part a reprieve of Chalandon's La Légende de nos pères (2009), in which a ghost writer is asked to put words to his father's false experiences. In Profession du père, where the word 'profession' plays on the meaning of 'occupation' and that which is professed or claimed, lying also plays a central part. The back page blurb gives a strong indication of the content, which I translate:

'My father said that he had been a singer, footballer, judo teacher, parachutist, spy, pastor of a Pentecostal American church and personal advisor to General de Gaulle up to 1958. One day he told me that the General has betrayed him. His best friend had become his worst enemy. So my father announced that he was going to kill de Gaulle. And he asked me to help him.

'I had no choice.

'It was an order.

'I was proud.

'But I was scared too...

'At the age of 13, a gun is really heavy.'

In part, this book is really heavy too: a violent mythomaniac father – in fact a maniac tout court – tells his young son (in reality an amalgam of Chalandon and his brother) that he has been all of these things and more: he was a secret agent for the OAS, his American friend Ted (the narrator's godfather, so his story goes) was JFK's bodyguard, and he's angry if the narrator doesn't perform well at school; somehow, this is supposed to justify the child beating.

At times it's difficult to understand how the mysterious 'Dr Helguers' hasn't declared the father unfit as a parent, or indeed anything else, but then his understanding of psychiatry appears to be non-existent. And what of the mental state of the mother tolerating all this? Years later, when the narrator – a restorer of paintings (especially medieval ones) manages (mentally, that is) to re-visit his parents, his father, far from being welcoming, tells his son he's just a 'messenger boy', not a real painter. The narrator also brings his French-born half-Algerian wife Fadila and baby to see his parents, only to receive subtle racist abuse and Fadila to say 'never again', without her even knowing that the father has been sending the narrator two letters a year (latterly not even opened, but each becoming increasingly insane). Ted? Just an invention inspired by a movie, the narrator finds out by accident.

This is a shattering piece of literature.

My other posts on Sorj Chalandon:
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Sorj Chalandon: La Légende de nos pères
Sorj Chalandon: Retour à Killybegs | Return to Killybegs

Sorj Chalandon: La Légende de nos pères (2009)

Previously a schoolteacher and then a journalist, Marcel Frémoux now receives commissions to write the life stories of people who want their experiences – or the experiences of their friends or relatives – translated into book form.

He is moved when a customer, the surgeon Lupuline Beuzaboc, contacts him to put together her railworker father's Resistance stories: Marcel's own father worked for the Resistance, although he never told his son anything of his experiences: Lupuline's father can therefore become a kind of proxy. It's more convoluted than that though.

Working on Beuzaboc's autobiography with him, Marcel soon comes to realise that Beuzaboc is lying about his heroic actions during the Resistance: bedtime stories he told the young Lupuline about killing a German in Lille, looking after an English airman, having his leg ripped apart by a bomb in the war, etc. Eventually Beuzaboc (which is also an invented name) implores Marcel to write the truth in the book, as he doesn't want to die leaving his daughter and friends believing a lie.

His daughter is already aware that these are lies – although neither Marcel nor the reader is until the end – but this leaves Marcel in a dilemma: should he tell the truth and expose Beuzaboc according to his wishes, or should the book continue as planned with all the lies?

Some people's lies are of course often other people's truths. Marcel sees a kind of vindication of his father's unrecognised work – and by extension that of others working against fascism in the Resistance – by writing Beuzaboc's original lies, which after all (apart from the very real events at Ascq, which Marcel resolutely omits) are at face value mere children's fantasy tales: so paradoxically, a kind of truth emerges through (and in spite of) the lies.

The structure of this novel strongly resembles a play, often in the form of a conflict between two people – Beuzaboc and Marcel. And I can see a resemblance here between this and Amélie Nothomb's crazy novels, but then I've probably read too many of her books for my own good. This is my first Chalandon though, but there's no reason why it should be my last.

My other posts on Sorj Chalandon:
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Sorj Chalandon: Profession du père
Sorj Chalandon: Retour à Killybegs | Return to Killybegs