On the face of it, nothing much happens in 174 pages, but then this is Christian Oster: much psychologising over anything said or done, the possible consequences of any future action taken, long sentences and long descriptions of ever single thing done, etc. This, in fact, is a monologue, with other people's words not read as actually spoken by them but added into the monologue, which also has very long paragraphs as well as long sentences.
And life here is pretty much a mess, with sudden switches of emotion, although perhaps not quite as dramatically as in some of Oster's other novels. The main character has a steady job but his love life is, well, indeterminate and he's very slow to make any decisions. Oh, and his name's Jean, although the novel takes a long time telling us this.
The main plot revolves around a small group of people who have been going on holiday in July together, such places by the sea as Corsica and Malta, and this time they decide to go to Hydra. They all are past their prime, most of them in their fifties or older. The oldest one is the now gross William, who's tried his hand as a dentist and a musician and several other things. Then there's the married couple Paul the doctor and his wife Louise, there's George who's split up from his wife, and finally the narrator Jean.
Things go wrong: William dies coming out of hospital and falls on his stairs onto Jean (who is in turn temporarily hospitalised); Paul and Louise split up; and although George very briefly moves into Jean's new flat with him near the Statue of Liberty replica below Pont Grenelle, he's soon moving in with the attractive estate agent.
Nevertheless the holiday goes ahead (although moved to Hérault) with the four existing characters: George's (whose new girlfriend may have found someone else) is on the train, so is Paul, and maybe Louise and Jean will hit it off. But where does Samantha in Paris stand in this, as she's expecting a child by Jean, who doesn't seem to react too well to becoming a father, if he has any detectable reactions at all? Yeah, it's a mess, but a fascinating one for the reader, even if it's perhaps not one of Oster's best.
My other posts on Christian Oster:
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Christian Oster: Dans le train
Christian Oster: Une femme de Ménage | Cleaning Woman
Christian Oster: Rouler
Christian Oster: Le Cœur du problème
Christian Oster: Mon grand appartement
On the back cover of the poche edition of Christian Oster's Mon grand appartement (1999), Patrick Kéchichian states that an Oster character is neither tragic nor absurd, and resembles no one or everyone. Well, I dunno. Tragic, no, but a little absurd surely yes, although the absurdity is that of the every day.
Luc Gavardine (usually called by his surname) begins the narration by saying he can't get into his big appartment (which doesn't have a part in the story, apart from his not being able to enter it) because Anne (whom he's at the time living with) isn't there to let him in, and he's lost his briefcase in which he carries he key. A lost key also appears at the end of the novel, although he finds it, as if he's unlocking the door to a new life, or maybe not.
Gavardine spends the night in a hotel (this is written before mobile phones became ubiquitous), and then goes to the florist shop where Anne works, to be told that she didn't go to his big appartment that night. Instead of asking her why, is the relationship therefore finished, and if so can he have his key back, Gavardine just goes away, buys a new briefcase and goes to the swimming baths to see an old female friend. But when he gets there his friend loses importance and it's love at first sight for him when he sees Flore (nothing to do with florists), who is heavily pregant, walks with her from the baths, and even arranges to go to the Corrèze on the train with her, where she's going to see her brother.
'Why?' and 'What if...?' don't necessarily count for much in Oster's world, and life-changing decisions are, well, just part of the normal course of events. Not that Gavardine has anything to lose by giving into a whim, as he seems to accept that he's lost his girlfriend Anne, doesn't have a job, so why not join Flore to meet her brother, even though he doesn't know if the father of her future child is still around?
As it happens, Flore's brother Jean, who runs a bar and an adjacent museum, welcomes Jean as a brother-in-law (Flore having been hastened to hospital to give birth to a baby called Maude) and even offers him a job of sorts as museum guide. Jean doesn't seem to be too much concerned that Luc (they're now on 'tu' terms) has only met Flore two days before and obviously isn't the father, and as for Flore, well, she doesn't love Luc but maybe things will work out all right.
Strange things happen to male protagonists in Christian Oster's books, and it's usually women who cause them: don't ask too many questions, just enjoy his highly original, amusing, and very engaging novels.
My other posts on Christian Oster:
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Christian Oster: Dans le train
Christian Oster: Une femme de Ménage | Cleaning Woman
Christian Oster: Rouler
Christian Oster: Le Cœur du problème
Christian Oster: En ville
A man without a woman, and a woman who has the upper hand. That sentence could be (broadly) used to begin a description of Christian Oster's Une femme de ménage | Cleaning Woman, Rouler, and Dans le train, all of which I've read and all of which are very loosely related thematically to Oster's Le Cœur du problème. Probably the main difference between the other three novels is that they don't have the same complexity.
In Le Cœur du problème Simon comes home to find a fully-clothed man lying dead in the lounge of his house. Simon's (doctor) partner Diane is having a bath, is very casual about the body, and picks up her things and walks out on him, hoping he'll take care of the situation.
Which he does, and in a typically Oster fashion, agonising over every minor detail (such as the ice packs to use initially to prevent the body from smelling too much, etc) until he finally buries it in the kitchen garden. Which is not the end but only the start of Simon's problems.
Simon reports Diane's disappearance to Henri, a cop who very soon retires but takes far too much interest in Simon's affairs, as he's suspicious about the poor state of Simon's balustrade, seems to have a vague interest in the vegetable garden (where Simon's buried the body), and is aware of the strange simultaneous disappearance of a male doctor.
Henri introduces Simon to his wife Nicole, and the trio are (sort of) getting on so well that Henri invites Simon for a few days' visit to Nicole's sister Raphaëlle's place. Simon, who is now interested in selling his house, is of course anxious about what Henri suspects, and Raphaëlle initially adds to his concerns by wondering why Henri is so interested in Simon, although she tells him not to worry.
Raphaëlle in fact seems to be a kind of fairy godmother, or guardian angel, to Simon. In a surreal, dream-like, drunken party in a partly restored castle in the village, to which Raphaëlle invites Henri, Nicole and Simon, the seriously drunk co-host Cécile Pajol befriends Simon to such an extent that she won't let him leave her. But after, Henri says he's very interested in buying Simon's house.
And then Diane (who has been in London and whom Simon has briefly met there) phones to say she wants to come clean about the (accidental?) killing. Simon doesn't think that that's a good idea. Henri contacts him to say he's no longer interested in the house, and Simon goes to visit Raphaëlle, who after a moment's surprise by his visit says she'll put the coffee on. End of story.
Loose ends? Reader left in the middle of a the story with nowhere to go, or can Simon now relax without any more problems? Who can tell: this is just Christian Oster playing with the reader again.
My other posts on Christian Oster:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Christian Oster: Dans le
train
Christian Oster: Une femme de Ménage | Cleaning
Woman
Christian Oster: Rouler
Christian Oster: Mon grand appartement
Christian Oster: En ville
Although published nearly ten years after the last book of his I read (Dans le train (2002)) many of the hallmarks of the previous book(s) of Christian Oster are here: the obsessing about minute detail, the unexpected, the strange, the old school friend, the agonising over buying minor items, the edgy atmosphere, the twists in the narrative, etc.
Jean (whose name we don't discover until much later in the story) just takes off on a road trip towards the south of France, although he has no specific place or plans in view, and we don't know why he's doing it. It wouldn't exactly be true to say that actions speak louder than words in the Oster world, as often very little is said, although the first person narrator is well aware of the ambiguities and the misinterpretations of speech, that talk often only serves as furnishing, filling in the spaces, and so on.
Jean vaguely has Marseille in mind, although he only finishes there by accident, and by avoiding Lyon and taking the wrong roads he accidentally finds his way to the Ardèche. The plot meanders like his car, and almost half of the book is over before he finds the relative stability of his school acquaintance Fred Malebranche's 'castle' near Arles, which isn't a castle at all but a rather odd hotel with rather odd guests.
Before that, though, Jean is delayed by two hitch-hikers who make him wait while they have a naked swim; gets involved with a couple in a hotel, the husband of which appears to be having serious breathing problems; and is helped by Paul and Claire when he gets lost, although when Claire drives him to his car he finds that she's running away from Paul, and she takes some time to shrug off.
And so back to Fred Malebranche and his (strange, of course) wife Hélène: Fred, although he hardly knows Jean, nevertheless treats Jean as a guest and almost as a long-lost friend. But Jean gets on far more with the older 'castle' regular Ségustat, whom he tells he's just wandering around the country because he's recovering from his girlfriend leaving him, and her recent death. This is while they're drinking coffee and then having a meal in nearby Mouriès. Jean begins teaching Ségustat to swim, even buys him a pair of goggles, but he will never use them.
It's only after Jean follows the ambulance carrying the very sick Ségustat to hospital and a phone call informs him that someone's in his property in Paris that the full meaning of the title 'Rouler' becomes evident: 'driving' is one obvious translation, but it also means 'con' or 'nick', and Claire has stolen his credit card and apartment keys.
My other posts on Christian Oster:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Christian Oster: Dans le
train
Christian Oster: Une femme de Ménage | Cleaning
Woman
Christian Oster: Le Cœur du problème
Christian Oster: Mon grand appartement
Christian Oster: En ville
Dans le train, published a year after Une femme de ménage, also has an odd young woman as the central point of focus, and the unmistakable imprint of the previous book is on this: the obsessing about tiny psychological factors, should he say, or do, this or that, or why has she said or done this or that? The minutiae of apparently unimportant actions take on a huge importance for Frank, the first person narrator.
It all starts while waiting for a train: Frank has decided to go on a day trip to Rouen, although he has no plans as to what he's going to do there. He sees that a young girl is holding a bag which looks heavy: maybe she doesn't want to put it down for fear of soiling the bottom. Frank therefore decides to play the gallant card and offers to relieve her of her weight. Just like that: he doesn't say he fancies the girl of anything else, he just does it.
And he puts the bag on the luggage rack for her and asks if he can sit next to her, which he can, although Anne says she's not much of a talker, although it turns out she is, and they have a conversation for an hour until the train stops at (the fictional) town of Gournon, where they have to change for Rouen, where Anne is also going. But Anne doesn't want Frank to carry her bag anymore as she says she's meeting her sister at the station and doesn't want to be seen with a man.
Frank, however, hides in the shadows and watches Anne wait for twenty minutes until she leaves the station and goes to a hotel. He decides he'll go there too: after all, they're both supposed to be going to Rouen but neither of them is doing so that day. And Frank's suspense regarding the young girl is such that he knocks on the hotel room doors until he finds Anne, who is surprised and not too happy to find Frank in the doorway, although she doesn't seem too bothered about what amounts to a virtually unknown man tracking her down. She doesn't let him in though.
Then Frank, who hasn't been carrying a bag or anything, realises that he must seem a little dirty to Anne: she may have guessed (incorrectly, of course) that he has a fold-up toothbrush in one pocket, but his other one surely isn't bulky enough to hold a pair of underpants. (There's no mention of a clean shirt or pair of socks.) So he goes out to just buy new underpants (although there's no further mention of a toothbrush, fold-up or otherwise).
On his return Frank finds Anne in the hotel lounge, and she invites him to come to a session in a bookstore, where (the fictional) Marc Soupault is giving a talk. I'll pass up on the details of the talk (which isn't much of one anyway) and move on to later that evening, when a rather distressed Anne appears on Frank's doorstep in a bathrobe which she hasn't bothered to fasten properly. She says Marc has just 'taken' her, but that's not it – the correct word is 'fucked', and Frank can 'take' her if she wishes. Frank is slightly gladdened that Anne has used the word 'taken' for him, but like Anne he admits that he doesn't want to indulge in sex either.
That's the story so far, and if the reader is expecting all ends neatly tied up at the finish of the book, to discover what Anne's relationship with Marc really was, then he or she hasn't encountered Christian Oster before. I'll just say they go to see Anne's sister in Rouen (she actually exists) and that there's a very satisfying orgasm on the train going, but that's just the beginning. Yes, Oster's books are a must.
My other posts on Christian Oster:
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Christian Oster: Une femme de ménage
Christian Oster: Rouler
Christian Oster: Le Cœur du problème
Christian Oster: Mon grand appartement
Christian Oster: En ville
My first Christian Oster, and certainly not my last. I think it's true to say that I've never disliked any author published by Minuit: often disturbing, edgy, inventive, gripping in a superior way, challenging, unusual, etc. Most of those adjectives fit Une femme de ménage.
The narrative is in the first person and we have access to the finest (equals minutest) thoughts Jacques has, and he has a great number of thoughts, many of them obsessive but not in a deranged fashion. But the whole thing remains very odd, and the fact that we know the ending is more or less inevitable doesn't in any way detract from the interest.
Jacques is in his fifties and his wife Constance has left him for six months, in which time Jacques has let the housework slide so feels it necessary to employ a cleaning woman. But he soon employs Laura to work for four hours on Mondays while he's at work. Laura is a beautiful girl of about twenty-five who doesn't really seems to have much experience of her work, but Jacques doesn't say anything to her even though she seems to have some kind of allergy to vacuum cleaners, or possibly doesn't know how to use one. But Jacques says nothing of his complaints, although he does mention that Laura could actually lift the objects she's just cleaning around the mantel-piece.
Not that this inferferes with the general plot, though, which shows Jacques also employing Laura on Friday (his day off), and Laura is soon desperate to find somewhere to live as her boyfriend's throwing her out. It's only a small apartment, but the gallant Jacques insists Laura sleep in his room while he takes the sofa bed.
This arrangement continues until the night Laura appears at the lounge door in her pyjamas asking if Jacques would like to 'make love' to her. Well, he's a free man, heterosexual and normal(ish), so of course he has no objections. And after a slight hiccup the sex continues. But then Constance (whom Jacques really dislikes) turns up on the doorstep and tells him she loves him and wants to come back.
That does it: Jacques has to flee, so he asks his (not too close, but...) friend Ralph to put him up for a week. (Ralph's real name is Raphaël, only Jacques doesn't know that, least of all that Constance gave him this name and was sexually involved with him – but that's a different story.) Ralph in fact puts them up for at least twelve days, by which time Laura has found a new lover and whose mother (surely just one of Laura's lies) seems to think that Laura is Jacques's father.
My other posts on Christian Oster:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Christian Oster: Dans le train
Christian Oster: Rouler
Christian Oster: Le Cœur du problème
Christian Oster: Mon grand appartementChristian Oster: En ville
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