Marie-Hélène Lafon: L'Annonce (2009)

Marie-Hélène Lafon's previous novel, Les Derniers indiens (2008) dealt, of course, with the peasant mountain farmers of Cantal, as does L'Annonce. But the conflict here isn't between the older farmers and the modern-minded neighbours, but between the older generation in the Cantal and a mother and child from Bailleul in the Nord joining the community in the Cantal.

The word L'Annonce has a religious ring to it, the announcement of birth, although the announcement here is a simple man-seeks-woman note in a paper, probably Le Chasseur Français, which the forty-six-year-old peasant farmer Paul from Fridières writes, and to which the thirty-seven-year-old Annette in the Nord replies. There follow a couple of meetings in a halfway, neutral place: Nevers, in the centre of France, where they exchange photos and (tentatively) body fluids.

Again, as in Les Derniers indiens, the language circles constantly, dropping a few pieces of information here and there like a sower sowing, weaves between the past and present casually, adding to the tapestry of time. Annette was the wife of a violent drunken husband, Éric the son, and she wants to begin a new life far from her previous urban background.

Paul has set up a new living area next to his elderly austere uncles, Éric turns out to have hidden rural gifts, and the ready-made family, with Annette working in the nearest supermarket to help them get by, a loving relationship (mercifully without sentimentality) establishing itself. Lafon is my best discovery so far this year.

Links to my Marie-Hélène Lafon posts:
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Marie-Hélène Lafon: Le Pays d'en haut : entretiens avec Fabrice Lardreau
Marie-Hélène Lafon: Sur la photo
Marie-Hélène Lafon: Les Derniers indiens
Marie-Hélène Lafon: L'Annonce

Marie-Hélène Lafon: Les Derniers indiens (2008)

This really is a comment on Marie-Hélène Lafon's Les Derniers indiens, but I feel this preliminary paragraph about an English novel is very relevant here. It's Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, who actually studied French language and literature at university. Let's take her first sentence in this book, which won the Costa First Novel prize award in 2017: 'When people ask me what I do – taxi drivers, dental hygienists – I tell them I work in an office.' OK, it's written in a chatty colloquial style, as though it is spoken, maybe many readers identify the narrator with themselves, which is why this thing is so popular – even if, in the pages I read, reality seemed to be taking a back seat and I just couldn't believe in the existence of the female narrator. There seems to be something wrong even from that first sentence, and surely this is the fact that the word 'people' is too far removed from the parenthesis? How about 'When people – taxi drivers, dental hygienists – ask me what I do I tell them I work in an office.' That to me seems to be a better worked-on sentence, and although I read several more pages this didn't strike me as an interesting book in any way at all: to be honest it seemed very tedious, and I'd certainly not the least desire to read it. Do most people really read books to identify with themselves, turn pages and pass the time, learning nothing in the process?  If so it's a very sad world, but I suppose at least people are reading something, aren't they?

But are they reading 'finished' books, by which I mean books over which the author has sweated and slaved over a hot keyboard, taking hours to phrase, re-phrase, re-re-phrase, etc, a sentence, paying loving attention and even hours to the place of a comma? I think not, but Marie-Hélène Lafon is definitely one of those writers who care deeply about how they write, but then Lafon seems to be writing out of an inner need, as opposed to Honeyman, who simply appears to be writing to appeal to as many readers as possible, to how much money she can make out of inevitably very drab novels. Lafon believes that most books are 'unfinished' in that nowhere enough time has been devoted to corrections.

But then again, Lafon is no average writer. Now a teacher in Paris, she was born in the département of Cantal, in the Auvergne, to a family she describes as peasant farmers. And her family knew that they were the last survivors – among les derniers indiens – and most of Lafon's books are shot through with her past, the way of life there, and how it is changing. 

Les Derniers indiens may have autobiographical elements, although it is certainly not an autobiography. The narrator is of course not the protagonist Marie (and how can a narrator in a any book ever be the same person anyway?), although we see the novel through her eyes, and the moment of learning that Jean, the man she lives with, is not her husband but her brother, can strike hard. Incest is never mentioned, and physical incest in particular, but the hints of (often port mortem) psychological incest run throughout the novel: the clothes of ancestors kept in the wardrobe, the relationship between Marie's mother and her late son Pierre, the photos, etc.

The neighbours underline the difference between the old world and the new, buying new farming gear, eager to swoop on Marie's property when death comes, and sell the heirlooms off to the local braderies. Lafon's interest, though, is not in making stories, her words – often present in long sentences, adjectives, nouns, adjectival phrases piled on top of each other, swirling around constantly as if birds trying to reach their target prey, enrapturing.

I read recently that there's a saying (or which I was unaware) that goes something like Americans write to tell a story, whereas their French counterparts write to create an act of literature. I wouldn't quite go that far, but Marie-Hélène Lafon's works are certainly acts of literature.

As for Gail Honeyman, well... her work speaks for itself!

Links to my Marie-Hélène Lafon posts:
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Marie-Hélène Lafon: Le Pays d'en haut : entretiens avec Fabrice Lardreau
Marie-Hélène Lafon: Sur la photo
Marie-Hélène Lafon: Les Derniers indiens
Marie-Hélène Lafon: L'Annonce

Marie-Hélène Lafon: Le Pays d'en haut : entretiens avec Fabrice Lardreau (2019)

'Versant intime' is a series of books, directed by Fabrice Lardreau, in which figures from the world of literature, the arts, sciences and travel speak about mountains, nature in general, their travels, and their relationship with the fragile beauty of the world: Lardreau himself is a journalist with La Montagne et Alpinisme along with being the author of ten novels and works of non-fiction. Here, in about the first two thirds of the book, Lardreau asks Marie-Hélène Lafon a number of questions.

Lafon was brought up on an isolated farm in the north of Cantal, her parents being peasant farmers who expected her to move away from the land because they realised that it was the end of the peasant farming industry. She describes her early life and her contact with the mountains and nature, and even though she is a transfuge, a former member of the peasant class now become an academic and a notable novelist, her previous experiences have moulded her, being something unforgettable: her novels have evident autobiographical elements, and she describes some of these.

She also describes her cultural experiences, the books and songs that shaped her life. Following the interviewing, Lafon includes a number of influential 'mountain' readings: Jean Ferrat's song La Montagne about people leaving the mountains, a song she saw as old-fashioned in her early teens, a song her mother liked, but which had an effect on her too; Julien Gracq's experiences of walking in the mountains near to where she lived; Jean Giono in the Auvergne rather than Provence; etc.

The most fascinating extract Lafon gives us here is from a collection called Vialatte à la montagne (published in 2011) in which Alexandre Vialatte (1901-71) speaks about Puy-de-Dôme. Lafon's parents used to buy the daily local paper La Montagne, which Lafon didn't read. Vialatte had a weekly column in the paper in which he may have written about mountains, or anything which took his fancy to write about. But even if he was writing about mountains, they may well have just been an excuse for him to digress. In the article Vialatte, in a remarkably amusing excuse for exaggerating the truth about the height of the Puy-de-Dôme, moves on to the Larousse encyclopaedia's mentioning Saint-Ferréol-sur-Arzon having a population of 2001. Vialatte points out that while the count was being made, Larousse forgot that the baker's wife had run off to Paris with the postman's brother-in-law, the butcher's wife had had twins, the sexton had died of cold, and the police sergeant had been eaten by a wolf. (Needless to say, Saint-Ferréol-sur-Arzon doesn't exist, but the reader gets a strong idea of Vialatte's humour.)

And the reader gets a strong idea of Marie-Hélène Lafon's psychology in this highly readable book. I shall be reading more of her work, although the Vialatte excerpt reminds me that I have a book of his his which contains many of his writings from La Montagne: I shall read that first.

Links to my Marie-Hélène Lafon posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Marie-Hélène Lafon: Le Pays d'en haut : entretiens avec Fabrice Lardreau
Marie-Hélène Lafon: Sur la photo
Marie-Hélène Lafon: Les Derniers indiens
Marie-Hélène Lafon: L'Annonce

Marie-Hélène Lafon: Sur la photo (2003)

Rémi lives in Paris with his wife Isabelle and daughter Louise, and is a collector of photos. This novel weaves in and out of Rémi's present life and his life as an eleven-year-old with teenaged sisters in the countryside. Maybe I wasn't quite ready for it, but I was certainly expecting more of this highly-rated novelist: OK, this is one of her earlier works, so I'll return to her.

Links to my Marie-Hélène Lafon posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Marie-Hélène Lafon: Le Pays d'en haut : entretiens avec Fabrice Lardreau
Marie-Hélène Lafon: Sur la photo
Marie-Hélène Lafon: Les Derniers indiens
Marie-Hélène Lafon: L'Annonce