Albert t'Serstevens's Un apostolat (1919; repr. with Afterword by Jean-Pierre Martinet (2018))

This fascinating little-known novel by the little-known Albert t'Serstevens has a sixty-six page Afterword by the also little-known (but more than a little fascinating) writer Jean-Pierre Martinet, whose 1980 masterpiece Jérôme is still (criminally) largely unknown even by French readers.

Here, the converts to the vegetarian life free from social and political constraints at first meet in the Restaurant Cérès: there's Pascal Marin, the older Chapelle, Krabelinckx (modelled on t'Serstevens himself, and a partial renegade who sneaks home to eat fried sausages), Firmin Lhommel, the poet Verd, etc. Anarchists, they form a utopian cummune named Cité Kropotkine but it doesn't stay a utopia for long. Plagued by infighting and huge theft by con merchant Botrou, the ideal ends with Lhommel's suicide and the collapse of the dream.

The second part of the book sees Pascal in London, which is to say the least a disappointment to him, and he spends his last weeks there living with the mysterious Déa, who may be a kind of prostitute but who knows? Returning alone to Paris, Pascal writes a pamphlet before becoming smitten by Lucienne, who lives in luxury and whose often absent but understanding husband Cunard is a financier. End of Pascal's egalitarian ideals.

Henri Verneuil's Le Grand chef | Gangster Boss (1959)

I know I have a thing about title translations (OK, translation in general) but 'Gangster Boss' is surely one of the most stupid. What's wrong with 'The Big Chief', which is not only more literal but far more appropriate? This is adapted from O. Henry's story 'The Ransom of Red Chief'. Anyway, Antoine (Fernandel) and Paolo (Gino Cervi) work in a car wash but want to run their own: and the best way they can think of getting money is by kidnapping young Éric (Joël Papouf), the son of wealthy Alain Jumelin (Jean-Jacques Delbo).

The first problem with their scheme is that they're not built in the gangster mode, they're just big softies. And the second is that Eric is a handful, causing Antoine and Paolo endless trouble with his Red Indian games, and giving them sleepless nights. In the end they give up on the ransom and just hand Eric back. The trouble is that the Jumelin household have the same problems with Eric, and as penance the would-be kidnappers have to look after Eric every Sunday, which is not a prospect they relish. This, of course, is the burlesque side of Henri Verneuil.

Henri Verneuil's Mille milliards de dollars (1982)

Yes, that's a thousand billion dollars, a huge sum of money today and obviously considerably much more huge in 1982. But that's the value of a few multi-national companies, and although GTI is a fictional company it's easy to figure out that it could represent a particular American concern. The plot of this is far too complicated to go into here, but this is Henri Verneuil's attack on international capitalism and the power it has, with just one man – La Tribune journalist Paul Kerjean (Patrick Deweare in one of his final roles) as the hero trying to untangle the various nets of corruption involved, at great risk to his life. An important film from Verneuil.

René Fallet: Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé (1975)

Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé is a celebration of a kind of non-intellectual anarchism: it (exaggeratedly) delights in the simple pleasures of life, the world of the impecunious work-shy rather than the social aspirant, the frequenters of the old-fashioned corner café which has staunchly resisted the get-rich-quick mentality of modernising and charging sky-high prices, the place where belote and the dice game 421 are played, where people can spend hours talking to fellow customers, cementing long friendships rather than popping in silently to have a swift drink or meal. But it's also a book that couldn't be written today, even as a novel of recent history, and this is because what was once acceptable – mild misogyny and casual rascism seen as jokes – belong to the past. There are four main characters.

Camadule lives opposite Le Café des Pauvres, where he spends much of his time, and makes a meagre living as a second-hand dealer. He sees work as an evil and would rather drink or fish (one of Fallet's own main interests).

Poulenc meets Camadule when the latter is fishing. He is in his early twenties, lives with his mother – a prostitute specialising in flagellation – and is a dog-sitter. On their first encounter Poulenc has ten dogs he's been paid to walk, and as he begins a conversation Camadule speaks of his hatred for work and encourages Poulenc to go with him to the café, leaving the dogs in his shed and quickly drawing the much younger man into his little world.

'Captain' Beaujol is another frequenter of the café. He fought in Vietnam and Algeria, which is at least what he says, although he wasn't a captain and he lives in dread that one day an old soldier from one of his regiments will enter and expose him as the coward he was, relegated to supply depots. He's a great drinker (even thought by some to be on the alcoholic side), and his home 'fouette un chouilla' ('stinks a tad': Fallet liberally peppers this novel with wonderful slang).

Finally, there's Debedeux, who is a high-flying business executive in aeronautics, and was once a pupil in the same neighbourhood school as Captain Beaujol. Le Captain meets him by chance one day and invites him to Le Café des Pauvres, to which Debedeux pays little attention initially. But later that day, sick of both his wife and his secretary mistress, he goes to the café almost in despair. There he's reminded of his early days as a working-class kid and his father taking him to a similar place, where he gave him grenadine. The transition takes some time, but eventually he's persuaded to go sick with a bad back, which of course can't be proved: he's now one of the work-shy crew.

The second half of the book isn't as well executed as the first: the accepted gang-banging of the disabled Prunelle (who becomes 'normal' at the end), and trip to Lozère where Conception (an ex-back-street abortionist!) finds love again, not to mention the rascist Captain due to marry a Muslim, are way too unbelievable. Which is a pity, as the first part is so promising: the second just seems rushed.

Medhi Charef: Le Thé au harem d'Archi Ahmed (2013)

The best general description of this wonderful book is on the back page of the Folio edition, which manages to include virtually all the elements in it, apart from stealing (maybe on the métro) as a survival mechanism. As the first French-Algerian novel of its kind, this is an extremely powerful work. Ah, the verlan: 'renoir' (noir, or black), 'keblas' (blacks), 'kefric' (money), etc. The title comes from a pupil writing his version of 'Le Théorème d'Archimède' on the chalkboard as 'Le Thé au harem d'Archi Ahmed', bringing on himself class ridicule. Anyway, as the back page says (with my translation):

 'A working-class highrise area. On the wall: grafitti, slogans, distress calls, obscene drawings. Mahjid lives there. He's the son of immigrants, lost between two cultures, two languages, two skin colours, inventing his own roots, the things he's attached to. He's waiting. Without thinking too much because of the unbearable anguish. Fear rules. Violence. Love too. For the mother Malika, the brothers and the sisters, the father – a little old man who fell from a roof and lost his senses. For the mates and friend Pat, bringing him good times and bad times, pulling girls and doing drugs. Tenderness, friendship, a few laughs: these are the only glimmers of light in an existence dedicated to failure. "Concrete doesn't sing, it howls despairingly like the wolves in the forest, paw prints in the snow, not even possessed with the strength to hollow out a hole to die in."'

Violaine Bérot: Pas moins que lui (2013)

 I was fortunate enough to buy this almost unread  and signed copy of Violaine Bérot's Pas moins que lui, the dedication of which reads: 'Cette histoire de corps vieillissant, d'absence et d'amour. 20 ans plus tard..' ('This tale of an ageing body, absence of love. 20 years later...')

Violaine Bérot specialises in unbelievable pain, family ties, etc. She lives in the Pyrenees where she was born. Her books are short, but then why should a book be long unless it's necessary? Pas moins que lui, in between telling an age-old story, is feminist in that it concentrates on the female version of the story, that which is often neglected in so many books.

We all know Homer's account of Ulysses leaving the small kingdom of Ithaca, where he lived with his queen Penelope and never really knew his son Telemachus who was born just before he was called to fight in the Trojan War. Penelope remained faithful, avoiding her suitors, the parasites of the court eager to take the place of her husband. The years went on, little or nothing was heard of Ulysses, Telemachus goes to look for him, and returns. A tramp returns at the same time, a man who will prove to be Ulysses himself.

Bérot's story is important as this is not a mythological tale that the world knows so well. Rather, this is Homer's story from a female psychological standpoint, of absolute fidelity but of sexual frustration over twenty years of very few believable stories of Penelope's husband's fate, of temptation, of resignation. And then of joy. Sort of.

Bruno de Stabenrath: L'Ami impossible (2020)

This is a 526-page book concerning a multiple murder ten years ago, and which still has France in thrall largely due to various 'sightings' over the years of the guilty man who escaped, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès: he's been 'seen' in thousands of places all over the world; he was thought to be living as a monk in south-east France; discovered bones near where he is last known to have been proved to be animal rather than human; and relatively recently a man looking nothing like him was arrested at Glasgow airport.

Like Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, Bruno de Stabenrath (as the 'de' indicates) is of aristocratic origin, although the cultural interests of the two – both living in Versailles – are mainly of popular American roots: this can clearly be seen from a Youtube clip from November 2020, where Stabenrath is interviewed remotely from his home, a photo of Elvis Presley clearly seen on the mantlepeice in the background. From their schooldays through a number of decades until the disappearance of Ligonnès, the men were friends, and this book begins with their youthful pursuits of music, young women and the obsession with America which the country holds for so many French people.

Stabenrath – born in 1961 – appeared in a few films in his earlier life, but became wheelchair-bound after a car accident in 1996. He then took to writing books, of which Cavalcade (2001) – largely about his accident and adapted to film in 2005 – was the first. His friend Ligonnès – who married Agnès when he was thirty – very much lived a fantasy life in spite of becoming the father of four children. In 1990 Ligonnès achieved his ambition of touring along the whole of the legendary Route 66, which took him eighteen months, with his friend Michel Rétif (whom Stabenrath improbably calls Micha Frostif). He also spent some time in Florida, setting up company there: his foolhardy business ventures were to cost his wife dearly, in the end very dearly.

Joining Ligonnès at some time in the USA was his faithful friend Emmanuel Teneur, in the book called Rémy, who would follow Ligonnès around France, moving to various places his family moved to, such as Provence and (the final town) Nantes. Agnès was not a little jealous of Emmanuel, although he often helped Ligonnès out with financial loans: a lonely alcoholic, Emmanuel was a non-practising homosexual who even remained friends with Ligonnès when, in Emmanuel's absence, his friend broke into his home and stole 6000 euros and his family jewels.

And then there's L’Église de Philadelphie, a religious sect set up by the Comtesse Geneviève Dupont de Ligonnès, Xavier's mother: she predicted the imminent end of the world, claimed the Catholic church was infested by the devil, and sent out monthly newsletters of her divine revelations to the dozens of followers who financially supported the sect. Both Xavier and Agnès firmly believed in the 'church', although Xavier – in a tremendous blow – lost faith in 1995 when a predicted divine happening didn't happen, but although Emmanuel knew it was a con he kept a low profile and didn't reveal his thoughts.

All the time Ligonnès – who is essentially making what little money he can (and certainly from his down-at-heel appearance it's very little) as a sales representative – is getting increasingly desperate, and concocts wild get-rich-quick schemes. He's now so much in debt that he not only only robs his friend Emmanuel but also empties his sick father's bank account. And he even hooks up with a former girlfriend from his early days when his parents owned a home in L'Île-de-Bréhat (where he met Emmanuel) and cons her out of 50,000 euros: when he tells her things have gone wrong and that he needs another 25,000 she refuses.

And then he discovers his wife is frustrated in a number of ways, and reads her emails: she's sex-starved, has begun a relationship with a certain Icham, and is being conned into a weird mediation course. To top it off, he later finds that Icham is an anagram for Micha, or his friend Michel. His life is collapsing around him.

The desire to create a new life is fully understandable, and perhaps many people in Ligonnès's position would simply disappear. Which is just what he did, although why did this normally completely unviolent man proceed with great deliberation to kill his wife and four children in their home with a rifle after drugging them, and bury the bodies in the garden in bin bags, adding large quantities of quicklime to ensure that they would decompose quickly? And why should he send four-page letters to relatives saying the American drugs squad had nominated him as an agent to go to the night clubs infiltrating drug cliques? Yes, they had called upon a fifty-year-old man to do this – the state of his mind is unimaginable.

Nevertheless, his strategies paid off and it was about ten days before the police discovered the bodies: he had plenty of time to do a disappearing act, and was last seen at an ATM in Roquebrune-sur-Argens after spending the night in an F1 hotel – this was an area he knew very well as his family had spent some time in Saint-Raphaël (which for some reason Stabenrath insists on calling Sainte-Raphaël).

No one knows what became of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, although Stabenrath is convinced that he is still alive: he wouldn't possibly have subjected himself to such rigorous planning if he'd wanted to kill himself. I'm not too sure of this reasoning as Ligonnès was so egotistical that he'd have wanted to keep up appearances suicide or no suicide, but whatever the outcome this is an amazing read.

Rebecca Lighieri’s Les Garçons de l'été (2017)

 

The writer Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam writes her romans noirs, of which this is an example, under the pseudonym Rebecca Lighieri. Les Garçons de l'été is essentially about multiple trauma and revenge, and might initially seem overloaded at 440 pages. But it's not, and this is a very powerful and highly readable book told by several narrators.

Thadée and Zachée are brothers of almost the same age, 21 and 20 respectively, both are academically brilliant, and both are huge enthusiasts of surfing. Their girlfriends – Jasmine and Cindy – are devoted young women. The brothers' parents are the chemists Mylène and Jérôme (who is having an affair with Maud), and have a young daughter, Ysé.

It's Thadée who is the problem, although the readers don't know this when he is forced to return home from La Réunion, cutting his one year stay short: he's been chewed by a bulldog shark, and will have to have a leg amputated. Thadée believes that Jasmine will no longer be interested in him, changes personality, broods and spends a long time just staying in bed doing a different kind of surfing: the internet.

Mylène is obviously devastated, and all the more so when Zachée too becomes a victim of the surf. Or rather, he's a victim of the tremendous ego of Thadée, a person whose hatred and egocentricity knows no bounds: he is responsible for the death of his brother Zachée, and although several people suspect this there's not a shred of evidence to prove it, and certainly Mylène doesn't even suspect what a monster her son is.

The beautiful Anouk, though, the girlfriend of a friend of the brothers, is well aware of what kind of person Thadée is, and has always been: before Thadée's accident, she chose at a party one evening to take a piss in the woods, and unbeknown to her Thadée was lustfully watching: he tried to rape her, and at the same time almost strangled her. She said nothing, but the trauma remained.

Cindy is inconsolable when Zachée, the one love of her life, is dead, and she knows Thadée is guilty of his death. One day, she gets talking to Anouk and learns that she hates him too. Although Thadée has left home, Cindy gains access – via the pre-pubescent Ysé – to his computer, and works out where Thadée is. With Anouk, Cindy goes to Thadée's hideout and tatoos his face, irreparably disfiguring him.

And the final word is with the very intellectually advanced Ysé, whose only friend – her mother being traumatised by the death of Zachée and the disappearance of Thadée – is the slightly backward (in comparison to Ysé) Jordy. Troubled by a 'poltergeist' for some months, Ysé discovers that it's Thadée, and orders him to leave: the result of which is that Mylène becomes permanently psychiatrically disturbed, Maud moves in with Jérôme and Ysé becomes more attached to Jordy, acknowledging that he's making considerable progress.

Reading this back, the book sounds like a pile of bullshit, and yet it's not at all: Lighieri writes in an almost graphic language which is attuned to different varieties of French, notably verlan. A joy to read.

Éric Chevillard: L'Œuvre posthume de Thomas Pilaster (1999)

L'Œuvre posthume de Thomas Pilaster is Éric Chevillard's ninth novel and was perhaps in part inspired by Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire (1962). Like a number of Chevillard novels, writing and the absurd hold a major place here.

The back cover contains a tongue-in-cheek illustration of what is in this book: seven previously unpublished texts by the well-loved, much lamented writer Thomas Pilaster (1934-97), whose life was brought a a brutal end. The book is edited and annotated by Pilaster's (only) friend, the poet Marc-Antoine Marson, who doesn't allow himself to lapse into hagiography. Also mentioned is that the books contains a few revelations about the role of Pilaster's wife Lise in his life and work. (Needless to say, both Thomas Pilaster and Marc-Antoine Marson are ficticious characters.)

Marson says he has known the frail Pilaster since his youth, and that the collected unpublished works here span forty-five years. Each text is prefaced by Marson's comments on them, and by the time he's more than halfway through it's obvious that he thinks they're all rubbish. In fact, Marson's friendship with Pilaster seems a very strange one because not only are his footnotes often (increasingly) critical of Pilaster, but he thinks he was a coward, heartless, greedy and possessed by an unbelievable vanity: 'Pilaster asleep, awake, he could only dream of glory'.

Marson was obviously in love with his wife Lise, who died tragically in a fall fifteen years before Pilaster died, and he was incapable of writing anything worthwhile after his wife's death. In fact, Lise (in Marson's résumé of Pilaster's life) is discovered to be rather more than Pilaster's muse at the end, and the impotent and reclusive 'writer' kills himself with his paper knife.

Giovanni Catelli: The Death of Camus (2020), trans. by Andrew Tanzi from Camus deve morire (2013)

 

So, a book titled The Death of Camus (originally Camus deve morire ('Camus Must Die')) with a Foreword by Paul Auster. Inviting certainly, although is there anything more to be said about Camus's death? Yes, definitely: Auster is right to call this book 'disturbing', and at the same time 'difficult not to agree with [Catelli]'.

Anyone familiar with the biography of Albert Camus (1913-1960) will be aware that he died with his friend Michel Gallimard in a Facel Vega near Villeblevin, the wrecked car hard against a plane tree. And that the passengers in the back seat, Gallimard's wife Janine and daughter Anne, escaped virtually unhurt.

Camus's monument stands very close to the Mairie in Villeblevin.  His coffin was carried out of the Mairie and taken to Lourmarin (Vaucluse), where he is buried and where many people still visit his grave.

The Death of Camus is a work of love, made by Giovanni Catelli who spent some time investigating Camus's death. A sentence from Jan Zábrana's notes, in which he says of the car Camus died in: 'They rigged the tyre with a tool that eventually pierced it when the car was travelling at hign speed'. On a straight road the car started to veer about and ended up hitting plane trees. Now why should that be?

Camus was a defender of justice, a person who didn't mince his words. A man who. having received the much feted Nobel Prize for Literature, also carried a huge power around with him in whatever he said or wrote. He was a strong opponent of Soviet 'Communism', and in particular the hanging of the Hungarian prime minister Imre Nagy by the Soviets. And he loathed the Soviet foreign secretary, Dmitri Shevilov. Obviously he was due for assassination by the KGB and The Death of Camus suggests how this could have been done: sabotaging the Faca Vega when it was parked for the night in Thoissey, where the passengers stopped for the night on their way to Paris.

Catelli's argument is convincing, his investigations thorough, and it is difficult to argue with his findings and his suggestions: Camus was much more than a typical example of people who had been erased from history by the Russians.

This is excellent detective work, although I particularly object to just one sentence: 'Sartre's cynicism, baseness and lust for personal gain masked as cultural interest have long been dismissed as a grave disappointment.' Really? I wasn't aware that cynicism was an offense, 'baseness' is both highly subjective and groundless if (as here) unsupported by examples, and the accusation of 'lust for personal gain masked as cultural interest' is stupifying: Camus bought a nice little town house for his family in Lourmarin on the proceeds of his considerable Nobel award, whereas Sartre refused to accept his award on the grounds that he didn't want to be an institution. Clearly, Catelli has accepted wholesale Michel Onfray's insistent (and shameful) potshots at Sartre in his brilliant (although marred) L'Ordre Libertaire: la vie philosophique d'Albert Camus (2012).

But The Death of Camus is a must to read, and will if not revise people's conventional acceptance of his death, at least make them strongly think twice about it. Am I convinced by this book? I think so.

Claire de Duras: Ourika (1823)

Claire de Duras (1777-1828) is an almost forgotten name in French literature, and yet the few novels she wrote, being concerned with difference, disclose an almost modern theme. Olivier ou le secret (written in 1822 but only published in 1971), for instance, is concerned with male sexual impotence, and Ourika with the problems of a black woman brought up in France during the revolutionary period.

Ourika begins with an introduction by a doctor brought to a convent to see the black nun Ourika, although the bulk of the novel is taken up with Ourika's story. At the age of two she was about to depart from Senegal to be taken away as a slave until the governor of Senegal bought her and left her in the care of Mme la maréchale de B. in Paris, where she was brought up in the same way as any white person.

That, as her benefactor recognises towards the end, was the main problem: paradoxically, she was killing the girl with kindness. Ourika is educated to a high standard and grows up for several years with Mme de B.'s grandchildren, the younger of whom – Charles – she becomes very attached to until he leaves for college at the age of seven.

Several years later Ourika discovers her fate through overhearing a conversation: being black, she faces an extremely lonely future because no suitable man will be willing to marry her. She removes all mirrors, tries as much as possible to hide her black skin from others, and dreads meeting new people. But all the time she tries to hide her feelings from her benefactor.

When Charles returns her interest in him is renewed, and she delights in conversations with him until he leaves to marry the wealthy heiress Anaïs de Thémines, with whom they soon have a child. A child she can't have, and she begins to regret that she has been taken from the slave ship, feels  that she could have been 'happily' married with a child in the slave cabins. She begins to waste away and Mme de B. realises what it took Ourika so long to understand: that she is in love with Charles.

And so Ourika finds that her only choice is to devote herself to God. This brings us to the end of her story and the doctor reveals in the final paragraph that Ourika then dies in front of him.

Patrick Lapeyre: Paula ou personne (2020)

Take two people like Jean Cosmo and Paula Wilmann – meeting quite by chance at a wedding reception – although Jean doesn't really know the bridegroom and suspects he's just been invited to make up the numbers on the groom's side, and Paula doesn't really like the bride (her cousin) and has only come because she was asked. In fact, neither Jean nor Paula would have been there under normal circumstances, it's just chance that brings them together. In addition, they met nearly twenty years before, as Jean recognises Paula as the younger sister of Alicia, whom he used to go out with when she was just thirteen. So they have something to talk about and agree to meet at a future time.

Jean is really excited about meeting Paula because it's a long time since he's had a date. But then, so many things separate them: she is a schoolteacher of German, whereas he works in a sorting office in a large post office and comes from a very humble family which didn't have a bathroom or have any books; she's a Catholic in a Catholic school, married to a German with a comfortable job; he lives in a lousy flat in 93 (in Montreuil), and she lives in les Invalides in the centre of Paris. On the other hand, he spent two years at university before leaving at the age of twenty and married a mythomaniac aged thirty for a few years; Paula loves her husband, but her sex life with Andreas is very poor and she has a separate flat near les Invalides where she can be herself. Plus, she doesn't see eye to eye with the other teachers, and the self-taught Jean can bowl her over with his philosophical ideas, particularly Heidegger's. Their impending fusion is a forgone conclusion.

And although it takes over five weeks for them to end up in bed, the wait (and Patrick Lapeyre's books are full of waiting) takes far less time than the central characters in his other books. But needless to say, waiting being something of a religion almost in Lapeyre's novels, it still exists in the time it takes Paula to turn up on a date, in the of number of days Jean has to spend until Paula comes back from her holiday with Andreas, etc. Waiting is desire, and desire is everything here.

The couple have taken a risk and both are aware that their time as lovers is limited: Andreas will inevitably be called back to Germany, and Paula will follow him: there is no way that Jean can support her, even if she wanted such a relationship. In any case, Paula tires in a year of leading a double life, and Jean's insatiable desire for sex is exhausting. But even as they part, Jean refuses to see Paula ever again, doesn't answer any of her calls, and just disappears.

Jean is a misfit, he didn't fit into university, he doesn't fit into his job, and most people don't talk to him at work. Even Jean's surname Cosmo suggests he's on another planet; but he thinks ordinary people are on another planet; he calls a disturbed co-worker who accuses him of sexual harassment a 'sexual' UFO; Reynaldo, a friend of a friend, looks like an extraterrestrial, and so on. Is Cosmo from some other place or does he dream other people are? As Paula puts it: 'You've invented a marginal, persecuted character for yourself and you enjoy him: you're his prisoner.'

At over 400 pages this is no doubt Lapeyre's longest novel so far, and is certainly the best I've yet read.

Pascal Boniface: Léo Ferré, toujours vivant (2016)

And so we see the back of the hirsute Léo Ferré (at the PSU celebration on 30 May 1973). Many books have been written about Ferré, and this is by a writer who has also been a fan of Ferré for many years. It may not add anything to previous knowledge of the singer, but it certainly serves as an introduction to the man.

Boniface gives the main biographical facts about Ferré: his birth in Monaco in 1916 to a loving mother and a very strict father who wanted his son to be a dentist; his schooling in Italy with friars who permanently erased any sympathy he would ever have for religion; his initial lack of success with the female sex, initially leading him to use prostitutes; his three marriages: the first brief one to Odette, who was no encouragement to his work, and in the early years he lacked professional success; his second marriage to Madeleine, who helped him in his success for many years but became an alcoholic and destroyed his 'ménagerie'; his final marriage to his much younger employee Marie-Christine, who carried the torch for him many years after his death in 1993.

Ferré bought the tiny Gueslin peninsula, to which he brought the very young female chimpanzee Pépée which outgrew the island. Extending space, he then bought the Château de Pechrigal in Le Lot, then the end of the world in France. It became a hell perhaps in proportion as the chimpanzees, a goat, a pig, numerous cats, etc, were added.

Ferré's musical life grew from not being recognised, to success, a leader of the 1968 revolution, criticisms for being what some considered an 'anar à la Rolls' (for which read 'champagne socialist', although he never had a Rolls-Royce), to being accepted in the canon of 'chanteurs à textes'. Many of his songs he wrote himself, although (another delight) he gave music to such writers as Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Villon, Aragon, fostered a knowledge of Rutebeuf, and so on.

Most of all, Ferré is seen here as an anarchist and an advocate of free love: someone who loudly proclaims 'NO!' to all religions, all politics, all educational systems. all judicial systems, in  fact all systems because they imprison people, enchain them, indoctrinate them, torture them, force them into believing that their maniacal and brain dead ideas are the only systems we can pursue. More than ever, we need to listen to Léo Ferré's words. Ni dieu ni maître.

Hervé Le Tellier: L'Anomalie (2020)

Imagine Blake, or whatever his name is at a particular time, or rather whatever his many names are, who is a hired killer, or rather he owns a thriving international vegetarian cooking business (yes, the irony!) with his wife as he has a double life. But then along comes a double. Of himself that is, a REAL double, as this person is actually himself, as if carbon-copied in three dimensions, totally identical, living, breathing, feeling, etc: the same person in fact. When the two meet, he (that is the first Blake) must kill him(self) because how can two such individuals exist? Hardly credible, hardly bearable.

And then there's Victor Miesel, an unsuccessful author of his own books, but who makes his money translating other authors. He kills himself though, but as a result (sort of) becomes a posthumously well-known writer, ripe for publication in a number of languages. What a pity he's killed himself! Although he's not, or rather the Victor who's killed himself has called himself Victør in the new book, incidentally titled L'Anomalie the same as this, Hervé Le Tellier's book – not that that matters a jot though because they're the same person (and not, sort of).

Just to end a very short list of the many characters who have identical characters (and there are over 200, but we don't meet them all), there's Slimboy, the Nigerian singer who's always (sort of) denied he's gay but at the same time always (sort of) hinted that he is gay. He gets on well with his identical Slimboy, and they make a great musical duo. (Of course the same can't be said of all the other identical couples, as jealousy, incomprehension must exist in spite of the existence of psychologists who are really needed in certain situations.)

What situations? Oh, I didn't mention that one. You see, there was a plane (on which the above characters were travelling from Paris to New York) which landed in March 2021, but then there was an identical plane three months later carrying identical people with identical histories wanting to land in New York too. The pilot (who had died of cancer three months before and will die the same death later) doesn't understand (after considerable turbulence) why he is forced to land at a US air force base: after all, not passenger plane has done so before. What is going on?

Le Tellier, OuLiPo chief, is what's going on. This novel is not science fiction but, er, partly extra-dimensional, a kind of 'what if...'. What if what? Well, what if beings existed with far superior intelligence to ours, what if there were far more dimensions than our perceived four, what if – and let's be honest here – we are just products in a computer program, not the 'real' people we think we are?

When it happens a third time though, POTUS has had enough and just zaps them out of existence. We can't allow this thing to proliferate, can we? (Although surely POTUS would have gotten on really well with himself? Uh, maybe not.)

L'Anomalie is an engrossing and provocative novel, pulling mathematics, philosophy, psychology, literature, and many more subjects into its compass. It's a brilliant novel, and I can fully understand why it's the favourite for the Goncourt (whenever that will be announced in these bookshop-closed times).

Just three thoughts:

1. There's a small section called (in English) 'THE PEOPLE HAS THE RIGHT TO KNOW'. I agree, they certainly has: at the end of the book Le Tellier thanks a number of people, although unless this is deliberate for some reason, I fail to see why an apparent grammatical error (singular in French but plural in English) passed proof reading. Can an enlightened person explain? Thought not: it's just an error.

2. Less seriously, the section 'Recontre du deuxième type' (yeah, Le Tellier's novel is full of quotations and allusions to both academic and popular culture) speaks of the 'second' Blake (rather like Beckett's Murphy) tied naked to a chair, although four pages later the 'first' Blake undresses the corpse! Another error the proof reader missed?

3. The novel is set in 2021, mentions coronovirus in the past, but still gives words by a completely stupid 'POTUS'. Now, I write this on the eve of the US election result: I can understand that Le Tellier had to move the scenes on a year because he thought Covid-19 would be short-lived, but predicting the US election? Wow! Some things in the novel just haven't been thought out.

Michel Déon: Un taxi mauve (1973)

Michel Déon's Un taxi mauve is a strange, and strangely haunting, novel. Set in his beloved Ireland, where Déon died, we have a motley group of characters, many of whom seem traumatised in some way. The American Kean siblings, from a very wealthy family, and who have Irish ancestry, are prominent, although only the young Jerry Kean lives there, albeit apparently only temporarily. He carries the guilt of his Iranian girlfriend being accidentally killed during an opium-smoking session in the States, and seeks something by moving to Ireland. His sister Sharon has married into the German aristocracy and is a princess, although many of her tastes are down to earth, and when she briefly visits Ireland she stays with Jerry in his primitive cottage without electricity, while her servant Li stays in a plush hotel. Jerry's other sister, Moïra, is a Hollywood film star and also makes an appearance. The final member of the Kean clan, Terence, is an astronaut who's only seen via the television.

We don't know the name of the narrator, although he had a son who's dead, and he has come to Ireland to live in peace, shoot game, read and listen to music. The presence of Sharon will disturb him, and she soon develops a liking for him, although the novel has nothing like the strong sexual hints of Yves Boisset's nevertheless well directed film with Charlotte Rampling, Philippe Noiret, Peter Ustinov, Fred Astaire, etc.

The strongest character in the book, which would be much diluted without him, is Taubelman, a huge guy who's a bit like, as the front flap of this France Loisirs (picked up in Bissy-sur-Fley, Saône-et-Loire) suggests, a mixture of Rabelais and Tartarin: he eats and drinks enormous amounts, and his stories are wildly exaggerated if not outright lies. He lives with his daughter Anne (who may or may not be his daughter), and (with the help of her) cheats at poker and wins a large amount of money from the players. Jerry, of course, is bound to fall in love with her.

All this is played out against an Irish backdrop, with the social centre being the pub with its rustic locals (plus a gay couple|), and the narrator's friend the supposedly retired Dr Scully, who drives the mauve taxi and views the natives affectionately and philosophically. An unexpected delight.

Laurent Mauvignier: Histoires de la nuit (2020)

Laurent Mauvignier's Histoires de la nuit was published earlier this month and isn't among the fifteen novels long-listed for the Prix Goncourt, although that rather surprises me. And although this is a psychological thriller, it bears the mark of Mauvignier's other books in many ways: pointilliste writing, trauma and the unspoken at the fore, and the psychology of the characters foregrounded to the actions. All the same, there is much action here, but even that is crammed into less than forty-eight hours in a 635-page novel, so this is Mauvignier's longest by far.

The hamlet La Bassée has come up as a name a few times before in Mauvignier's work, and here virtually all the action takes place in it. Patrice Bergogne, whose two brothers have left the farm after his father's death, has decided to continue the family business and lives in the hamlet with his wife Marion (found on the internet, much to his delight) and ten-year-old daughter Ida. Marion is six years younger than him, has studied printing and works for a printing company in the small (pop.  3000) town nearby and will shortly be celebrating her fortieth birthday.

There's an empty property for sale in the hamlet which the Bergognes are selling, although so far only a few Dutch and English have shown any interest, but eventually backed out. La Bassée really is almost in the middle of nowhere, which is why it has appealed to Christine, a Parisian artist of 67 who likes the anonymity of the place, and who is often driven into town by 'Bergogne' as she calls him, whom she sees almost as a son. The story – and there very certainly is one, although it is deliciously, tantalisingly drawn out in the minutest of detail – begins with a kind of Hitchcockian MacGuffin in which Bergogne once more has taken Christine to the police station to lodge a complaint about an anonymous threatening letter she's received, which (like the former ones) is increasingly menacing. But that's more or less all we hear of the letters, although they remain in the background for some time.

And then Marion's past revisits her, in the terrifying shape of a trio of brothers: by age downwards, Denis, Christophe and Bègue. In dribbles, we learn of Marion's past in a place 500 kilometres away, of the life she ran away from, of her sexual promiscuity, the drugs she took, her life with the violent Denis, her being an accomplice with him in a killing but escaping imprisonment, of her escape (pregnant with Ida) to another life while he spent ten years behind bars. Daddy Denis has come back for revenge.

As I said in the first paragraph, trauma is one of Mauvignier's preoccupations: Marion has had a miserable childhood, and her penniless, alcoholic mother slashed her wrists in the bathroom of a hotel she couldn't afford; Bergogne has been taught by his parents to be completely selfless, only to care for the interests of others, and after two rather fruitless relationships he marries a woman who wants to flee from her past and doesn't believe in love; Bègue has a history of psychiatric illness and is used by his brothers; Christine is escaping from the cultureless idiots in Paris who would rather talk about the quality of the champagne at her exhibitions than her paintings, etc.

And then there's the unspoken, which is so deafening in Mauvignier's work: Bergogne's sexless marriage and his resort to prostitutes; Marion's silence about her past; Christine's blanking out of previous married lovers to the police, which may have provided them with motives for the poison pen letters; Ida's silence to anyone because who would believe a ten-year-old?, etc.

The title Histoires de la nuit relates to the bedtimes stories Marion tells her daughter, also of course to the stories the reader learns on the night of Marion's blood-drenched birthday, and to the histories of the protagonists. This is a masterly performance by Mauvignier, although perhaps slightly overdone: the ending is full of violent horror, the baddies get their just deserts, on the plus side we're not too sure about the ultimate survival of Christine and Marion, but Ida as deus ex machina is surely a little clichéd? I loved it, but as it's so packed with suspense and blood I can't help thinking that Mauvignier is going for the money.

François Bégaudeau: Dans la diagonale (2005)

Dans la diagonale is written by the writer of the novel Entre les murs (The Class), which was published the year after this novel (2006) and adapted to the cinema, for which it won director Laurent Cantet the best film award of Cannes in 2008. The film Entre les murs is even well known in England, which is relatively rare for a French film. The book Dans la diagonale, on the other hand, is little known to any French people. And after wading though it, I can quite understand why.

Dans la diagonale is written in a truncated, telegraphic fashion with verbs usually omitted, sometimes with many pages with no sentence or paragraph breaks, just strings of phrases making very little sense. In a word, it's a mess, and the lack of reviews of the novel are surely testimony to its almost total failure to engage the reader.

The story, such as it is: the narrator, who only uses the first person in the opening section to reply to a few questions, and his name appears to be Teddy. To the narrator's horror, he is hailed in the street by an old schoolmate Jacques, who invites him to a party he's having with his wife Anabelle. The narrator feels obliged to go and hitches there, subjecting the reader to the comments of the various drivers made on his way.

When the narrator arrives the scene seems to be something out of a Buñuel film, with gluttony, heavy drinking and sexual lust coming to the fore: so could this be a satire on the bourgeoisie, with added criticisms of the way people from the south of France speak in extra syllables, or others denote expressions in 'speech marks' at the side of their ears, etc? If so the joke wears thin after a while and the reader gets sick of the constant repetition. This is all played out against a backdrop of TV footage of the war on Iraq and music from Alain Bashung, The Strokes and Green Day but not (as one guest would have liked), Édith Piaf.

And the party develops into some kind of orgy and the narrator is accused of raping Annabelle, to which he won't admit. I could go on but let's just say that François Bégaudeau is very far from being James Joyce. Not a disaster novel but a disastrous one. 'Je m'en lave les mains'.*

*Alain Bashung, 'La nuit je mens'.

Jean Echenoz: Envoyée spéciale (2016)

In Lac (1999) Jean Echenoz wrote a kind of parody of the espionage novel, and after some time dabbling with biographical novels returned to espionage here, although with a difference, as it doesn't read as if it's a parody, and much more is involved here: the spy story just seems a starting point for Echenoz to weave a very complicated web in which the 'story' becomes a number of interrelated stories in which there are occasional digressions made gratuitously by the narrator, who is sometimes 'I', or 'we' or 'you', etc.

It's pretty impossible to sum this novel up without writing a great deal, and in any case that wouldn't make a great deal of sense because of its complex nature: there are a large number of character studies here, although that's the wrong expression because we only see parts of a person. Let's say we just see certain facets of the characters' personalities.

The novel begins with the ageing General Bourgeaud of some kind of secret police telling his much younger worker Paul Objat (later named Victor for anonymity) that he needs a woman, and Paul saying he does too, but that's being facetious because Bourgeaud's reasons are professional and Paul's are sexual. Yes, Bourgeaud needs a woman to spy, but a woman who knows nothing about spying. Paul thinks he knows the woman (although he's never spoken to her) and she (the paradoxically-named Constance) is kidnapped outside the Cimetière de Passy near Trocadéro – the first part is a second nature for those familiar with Paris – where the novel will end in a kind of circle via Creuse (the second least populated département in France) and Pyongyang.

Creuse is where we have the development of both Stockholm syndrome and its opposite Lima syndrome, where the abducted (Constance) sides with her abductors (Jean-Pierre, Christian and Victor), and vice versa. And things are in part played out in South Korea, where Gang is ready to defect, but.

There is a whole, er, gang of other characters here, killings, social bondings, eccentricities and so on, but I'll leave it at that or it might risk becoming too complicated. This is a gripping book, full of twists and turns, and has to be read in a short space of time or you might lose the thread(s).

Éric Chevillard: Sans l'orang-outan (2007)

Éric Chevillard's Sans l'orang-outan has been said to be his most political novel, and that is perfectly understandable: it depicts a world – very sadly probably not that far from us in time – when the orangutan will no longer exist, when it will be as dead as a dodo, or a glyptodon.

Sans l'orang-outan is in three parts, in the first of which the narrator Albert Moindre (a favourite character for Chevillard, and his surname – 'moindre', meaning 'slightest' or 'least', is a favourite word) – learns that the last two orangutans, Bagus and Mina, have died of a virus. Moindre works in the zoo and everyone is devastated by the news. 

The second part goes crazy, and the narrator is plunged into a barren, meaningless, hellish violent world in which almost any hope of humanity, any hope at all in fact, is virtually non-existent. All because the orangutan has gone. This part is very similar in theme and tone to Chevillard's next novel, Choir (2010), and could very easily be viewed as a precursor to it.

The third part, as well as reminding us of the disappearing forests causing the orangutans to lose their habit for the increasing use of palm oil,  plunges us into surrealism: Bagus and Mina have been stuffed, and as a reminder of what has been lost Albert Moindre has their remains displayed in a glass case for all to see. There are also very odd remarks that he makes about his sexual attraction to them, which reminds me of Joseph's behaviour in Marie Nimier's La Girafe (1987).

Sans l'orang-outan can be seen as a symbol of impending ecological catastrophe or by extension of humanity's insensitivity to anything other than profit. It is a genuine horror story.

Éric Chevillard: Choir (2010)

Choir, literally meaning 'Falling' (possibly in a (mock-)religious sense), is almost undoubtedly one of Éric Chevillard's bleakest books, with suggestions of (waiting for) Godot, Endgame and a little Lautréamont.

The inhabitants of the island of the same name all want to leave the hell they're in: a place that can be freezing, where food (such as it is, and often they rely on root crops, animals they catch, or even eating themselves – at one time when people had died, or there's a suggestion of parents eating their young). The land is covered in guano or infertile sand, sometimes quicksand in which they're buried alive. Not only is the land itself hostile, but they're prey to savage animals or even themselves as there's frequent infighting.

This is not a timeless environment because planes often arrive there: forced to land for whatever reason, the planes crash, are forced by necessity to land on Choir, or are drawn to the island as if by some kind of magnetism – there's a suggestion of a kind of Bermuda triangle. Whatever the reason, any survivors are unable to make contact with any outside civilisation and must join with the others in fruitlessly wanting to leave. Inevitably, this seems (as in Beckett) to be a description of the human condition.

Contradictions abound, the hunters become the hunted, sleep is avoided for fear of dreaming of Choir only to wake up to the living nightmare, misfortunes are counted off as if prayers on a rosary, and sex is generally avoided because it can only result in producing more despairing life. And yet one game consists in causing the opponent as much harm as possible without killing him, as if misery must paradoxically be prolonged.

But there's hope of a kind. In the centre of the island is a statue to the one person who has succeeded in escaping from the island – Ilinuk, who built a machine from the wreckage of the planes: he is worshipped as a god, and the main essential thread in this story is the aged Yoakam's tales of his relationship with Ilinuk and of how he awaits his promised return, like a saviour coming back to free his people from their servitude. Or could he be rambling, is Ilinuk dead or did he in fact exist? Chevillard piles on the misery, emphasizing one of his obsessive themes: the impossibility of survival.