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