Éric Chevillard: Ronce-Rose (2017)

Ronce-Rose is a surprisingly relatively conventional narrative novel, although not without some oddities and many digressions, often in the form of the narrator's thoughts. Ronce-Rose is a young girl, perhaps about ten or eleven years old, who lives with her father (or perhaps uncle) Mâchefer, whose best friend is Bruce, and they are a couple of robbers specialising in banks, jewellers and service stations. And the novel is told by her and entirely from her point of view, although the language (if not the perception) comes from a more mature person's viewpoint.

The description of the story by Ronce-Rose, or Ronce, or Rose, is told in a childlike way but paradoxically also in another very adult-like fashion, frequently including words that Mâchefer has taught her: she hasn't received a state education, only learning from what Mâchefer has taught her, and she treasures the words she has learned. But she doesn't seem to be aware of the nature of  Mâchefer and Bruce's jobs, and is more interested in the tit bird family in the tree near her room. Her neighbours, the witch Scorbella and the one-legged man, also interest her.

And then Mâchefer and Bruce disappear for longer than they have been gone for before and she decides she must look for them, popping into the café, visiting the fountain in town, all the time writing (as her private diary is almost a character here), all the time searching for Mâchefer and his frequent disguises, all the time leaving chalk marks revealing where she's been so she can be traced by him.

In a shop window she sees a television clip of the police killing Mâchefer and Bruce but believes it's a completely different fictional film played by lookalikes, so continues her search, which leads to her eventually being taken back home, back to where she started, and where she must wait for Mâchefer.

The 'publisher' states that her notebook ends there, and that the mummified body of Rose as an old woman was discovered by chance, with chalked arrows all around her house.

My Éric Chevillard posts:
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Éric Chevillard: Oreille rouge | Red Ear (2005)
Éric Chevillard: L'Explosion de la tortue (2019)
Éric Chevillard: La Nébuleuse du crabe | The Crab Nebula (1993)
Éric Chevillard – Au plafond | On the Ceiling
Éric Chevillard: Le Désordre azerty
Éric Chevillard: Dino Egger
Éric Chevillard: Le Vaillant Petit Tailleur
Éric Chevillard: Le Caoutchouc décidément
Éric Chevillard: Palafox
Éric Chevillard: Un fantôme
Éric Chevillard: Du hérisson | Of the Hedgehog
Éric Chevillard: Démolir Nisard | Demolishing Nisard