Emmanuel Carrère: La Classe de neige | Class Trip (1995)

Emmanuel Carrère's Classe de neige (called Class Trip in translation) is all about the troubles of Nicolas, whose specific age isn't given, but who is under twelve. Nicolas is one of nature's outsiders: he is easily frightened and has an over-active imagination, he is small for his age and the butt of his fellow schoolkids's jokes, and as for his father – well, that comes later.

The school is off for a two-week trip into the French Alps learning how to ski, which is a great opportunity for Nicolas to try to integrate, although his father insists that it's best for him to drive the whole four hundred kilometres plus with just himself and his son: he's used to driving as he's a sales rep in the prostheses field, and may well be carrying artificial limbs or whatever: and that's what he does.

But then he deposits his son at his destination without noticing that the bag containing everything Nicolas needs for the stay, fresh clothes, pyjamas, toothbrush, drawsheet (Nicolas still wets the bed), etc, has been left in the trunk of the car: Nicolas, who has to be updated on what has happened between the arrival of the school bus and and his own arrival, is in a huge mess because he has no pyjamas to wear or even the wherewithal to brush his teeth.

Slightly ludicrously, the giant pupil Hodmann lends him a pair of pyjamas (the others not volunteering owing to Nicolas's urinary misfunctions, and of course because this is Nicolas anyway), but Hodmann seems a little menacing: not the kind of guy you'd neccessarily want as a friend, but a kind of friendship nevertheless develops between the two kids. But all along there's this atmosphere of menace, of impending doom. Will it come to Nicolas, and what will Hodmann have to do with it (if at all)?

Carrère's narrative is linear, apart from Chapter 26 (with just five chapters to go), which is very short and set twenty years on, when Nicolas is passing by Trocadéro, and his name is called by Hodmann, who's sitting on a bench drinking wine and eating meat. He shouts Nicolas's name, threatens him with a knife, and Nicolas doesn't say anything but just runs away from the danger.

Nicolas is not only still an outsider, but even more of one. Although never known alive, the presence of René, a young kid from a local village near where the ski class was situated, is felt very much in this book: René was missing, and shortly afterwards found murdered and mutilated. When the highly agreeable and tactful animateur Patrick drives Nicolas back home before the end of the trip, when he fills up with petrol at a motorway service station, he has to avoid the displayed front pages of the newspapers declaring Nicolas's father a 'monster'. He takes the boy back to his mother, although Nicolas knows that she will already have concocted excuses about his father, such as that he's in hospital but for some reason can't be seen, or that he's dead but for some reason his grave can't be visited. Nicolas knows that in his own life there will be no pardon, although of course there is nothing at all to pardon him for: he outsiders himself, but is also outsidered by others. His father has in effect destroyed him as well as René: both are now voiceless.

My other posts on Emmanuel Carrère:

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Emmanuel Carrère: La Moustache | The Mustache
Emmanuel Carrère: D'autres vies que la mienne | Lives Other than My Own
Emmanuel Carrère: Un roman russe

Emmanuel Carrère: La Moustache | The Mustache (1986)

This Folio edition of Emmanuel Carrère's La Moustache has a picture of Otto Dix's painting Le Roi des coiffures ('The King of Hairdressing') on the cover, and seems to indicate a quite amusing book. In fact the book is very amusing – most of the way, at least. The author moves the reader through an atmosphere of unease, and there really can only be one answer to the mysteries in this book. But there can be no way of knowing that the book turns into something very disturbing, in fact into a horror story at the very end.

But to the beginning of the novel. The narrator has access to the thoughts of Marc, an architect who's been married to Agnès, who's in publishing, for five years. When she goes to the shops on one occasion, Marc decides to shave his mustache off, and the excessively fussy narrative goes into great detail describing how he goes about this. But when Agnés returns she disappoints Marc by not saying a word about her husband's changed face. And when they go for dinner with their good friends Serge and Véronique, neither of them says anything about it either.

When they get home that night Marc introduces the subject of the silence surrounding the lack of hair between his chin and his upper lip, only to be told that he's never had a mustache. This even leads to Véronique being urged, in spite of the late hour, to phone Serge and Véronique, although they only verify the absurdity: Marc has never worn the mustache that he knows he's worn for many years. Marc knows that his wife's given to practical jokes, although he's never been the subject of one before, and her continuation of it is a little too much.

Furthermore, when he goes to work Jérôme (his  best friend) and Samira say nothing about his facial change: surely Agnès hasn't made them join in the joke too? Well, he thinks of all manner of reasons for this mystery, his marriage is suffering, maybe he should just play their game in order to bury the problem? Easier said than done.

His obsession continues, even to the point of pretending to be blind and asking a passerby if it's his photo on his identity card or he hasn't got someone else's by mistake. Yes, it's him – and he's wearing a mustache. This is a great relief, and proves that he's not the one who's going mad but his wife, so she's the one who needs the psychiatrist they've been talking about. Especially as she tries to scratch off the mustache she's convinced he's drawn on his identity card. And then she seems to have hidden the photos from their holiday in Java which prove his point, although she says they have never been to Java! And then, truly bizarrely, she claims they don't know anyone called Serge and Véronique, and Marc's parents, whom they regularly see, according to Agnès is in fact now just Marc's mother as his father died the year before. Agnès is clearly howling mad and needs urgent help.

But for some reason Jérôme too thinks the mental problem lies with Marc. How can this be? They must be having an affair and want to see Marc locked away. But why so when Agnès can so easily just ask for a divorce? Marc seems to be in a cleft stick and there's nothing for it but to run away in order to avoid the padded cell. So on an impulse Marc lands in Hong Kong, for relaxation taking the ferry backwards and forwards to Kowloon all day. But what to do with his life? How about Macao? Then he finds Agnès in the hotel room waiting for him as if nothing's happened. And so the story ends as it's begun – in a bathroom, only this time it doesn't end with shaving off a mustache, but with a final few pages of graphic self-mutilation.

The back cover tells potential readers that they're strongly advised not to peek at the last pages of the book. But there's no warning to the squeamish to avoid this truly weird, horrific book at all costs: it should be given an 18 certificate, just like movies that take things a little far. Personally I found it unputdownable, although I can understand any negative reactions.

My other posts on Emmanuel Carrère:

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Emmanuel Carrère: La Classe de neige
Emmanuel Carrère: D'autres vies que la mienne | Lives Other than My Own
Emmanuel Carrère: Un roman russe

Emmanuel Carrère: D'autres vies que la mienne | Lives Other than My Own (2009)

Emmanuel Carrère's D'autres vies que la mienne – trans. by Linda Coverdale as Lives Other than My Own in the American and Other Lives but Mine in the English edition – is perhaps self-explanatory to anyone acquainted with Carrère's previous work: it's an attempt to move away from self-preoccupation and on to the lives of others.

This is a true story, although not exactly a linear one, which concerns itself essentially with three things – the 2004 tsunami in south-east Asia; excessive debt and two judges working in that area; and his sister-in-law's early death from cancer.

Carrère closely but indirectly experienced the effects of the tsunami when on holiday in Sri Lanka with his partner Hélène and their two sons, each by a former companion. A family staying in the same hotel lose their daughter Juliette, and the narrative reconstructs the effects of this death and others in such a way that painfully and skilfully describes large and tiny details. This section is particularly powerfully written.

When the family returns to Paris the author's sister-in-law (also Juliette) dies, leaving three daughters and a husband who is earning much less money than his judge wife. Juliette had one leg amputated, as did a her close friend Étienne, and Carrère begins the first of a number of interviews with Étienne about his life, his sympathetic (left-wing) work as a judge of victims of excessive debt, and his relationship with his colleague Juliette, who is doing similar work.

At first I couldn't see the where the tsunami fitted in, but at the end it's clear that the effects of the tsunami are to a certain extent mirrored – but in a smaller way – in the third part, which concerns the death of one person: the interest is still on the effects, the small details of tragedy.

Some critics had previously seen Carrère as something of a narcissistic writer, although I think he redeems himself in this book – parts of which are quite devastating.

Below are links to other Emmanuel Carrère books I've commented on:

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Emmanuel Carrère: Un roman russe
Emmanuel Carrère: La Classe de neige
Emmanuel Carrère: La Moustache | The Mustache

Emmanuel Carrère: Un roman russe (2007)

Un roman russe is translated literally in the English (but not the American) edition as A Russian Novel, although it's largely autobiographical, representing just two years in Emmanuel Carrère's life. However, lives other than his are involved here, and the book begins with a small film crew (of which Carrère is the director) being sent out to Kotelnich (no second 't' in English), a depressing Russian town 500 miles east of Moscow.

The original intention was to make a film about András Toma, a Hungarian soldier captured by Red Guards who spent fifty-five years imprisoned in Russia, the last fifty-two of them in a psychiatric hospital in Kotelnich: somehow, Toma had been forgotten over the years and was declared dead in the 1950s. However, there is not enough material for a feature film and the crew go back to France. But Carrère and crew later return to Kotelnich to make the film Retour à Kotelnitch (2003), and Un roman russe is in part about the making of this film. (The original film about Toma became a bonus short on the DVD called Le Soldat perdu ('The Lost Soldier')).

So we have a story about Carrère which begins as a story about Toma, although that (much like the film) really turns out to be a kind of false start, or maybe an excuse for a new beginning. But why does Emmanuel return to this hole? He's not too certain, although as a kind of therapy he's working on a dark part of his family history that has hitherto remained a secret that his mother Hélène Carrère d'Encausse wants to keep buried until her death: her father Georges Zourabichvili, a Georgian refugee, 'disappeared' after collaborating with the Nazis in World War II. Perhaps Kotelnich is where the disappeared go, or more likely perhaps Carrère can find a psychological gravestone for his grandfather, can exorcise his demons.

Emmanuel's demons, though, are often self-created and he has strong self-destructive impulses. The book is also a kind of love story, involving the fraught relationship between Emmanuel with his partner Sophie. And here we come to one of the central issues, because Sophie, who works for a children's publisher, is of a lower class than Emmanuel, who is proud of displaying her beauty to friends, but ashamed, for instance, of the fact that on hearing about the merits of Saul Bellow, she writes herself a reminder to read some 'Solbello'. Emmanuel is egotistical: the couple's life revolves around his whims, whereas Sophie's wishes come a low second and she is unsure of her position in the relationship. It is perhaps not too surprising that (on one of Emmanuel's several long trips away) she takes a lover as a kind of emotional insurance policy: and of course it is no surprise that Emmanuel finds her infidelity wholly unacceptable, even though he adheres to the age-old double standard and has had a brief affair with a young woman himself.

Partly to attempt to patch up the flagging relationship, Emmanuel (before discovering Sophie's infidelity) writes a short story which is published in Le Monde, and which amounts to a long erotic (some might say pornographic) love letter which is – in keeping with Emmanuel's dominant character – almost in the form of an instruction manual. It uses explicit language that shocked many people and annoyed some writers, Philippe Sollers being a notable example.

Some readers might admire Carrère for, as it were, laying himself bare, for exposing his faults for all to see, while others might find him heartless and self-centred for revealing the skeleton in the family cupboard and causing his mother (a highly respected public figure) considerable discomfort. He writes directly to his mother at the end of the book and says that it's better that he uses this form of psychotherapy if it prevents him from killing himself. But doesn't that sound slightly like emotional blackmail?

I wasn't troubled by the multiple narrative threads in the book, nor by its start-stop nature, and in many respects I found this an enthraling read. But the protagonist isn't a sympathetic character at all: he is a weak, unstable person, much like a spoilt child with little emotional maturity and very little regard for anyone but himself.

Below is a link to the short story published in Le Monde and called L'Usage du Monde: this is also the title of Nicolas Bouvier's 1963 book that was translated as The Way of the World. There are also a links to other book comments by the author that I've made.
 

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L'Usage du Monde, by Emmanuel Carrère
Emmanuel Carrère: D'autres vie que la mienne | Lives Other than My Own
Emmanuel Carrère: La Classe de neige
Emmanuel Carrère: La Moustache | The Mustache