Hélène Lenoir: Son nom d'avant (2005)

Son nom d'avant is in three parts, the second part being by far the longest. The first part is an obsessive view of a street, concentrating on a girl of about twenty who boards a bus where a man is standing and who stares at her.

In Part II the same girl appears, now a 39-year-old woman with children, and who we learn after some time is Britt Casella, married to a man very comfortably off with his own business. But, as with (all?) main characters in Hélène Lenoir's books, she's mentally asphixiated, as is quite clear from her interior monologue. Justus is employing the prominent photographer Johann Samek to photograph his building. Samek, it soon becomes evident, is the man who was standing on the bus about twenty years ago, the man who stared at the young Britt. And he's preoccupied by the photo of the older Britt in Justus's office.

Part III begins with Britt receiving two photos addressed to her from Samek, photos relating to her twenty years before, just before she took the bus. But she doesn't understand, thinks he's made a mistake. Of course, she hasn't, and she phones Samek, and what he mainly wants to know is her 'name before', which brings us to the title. She was Britt Ardell, but what the present Britt Casella is she doesn't know, and she must flee from her marriage. The conclusion is far from conclusive.

My Hélène Lenoir posts:
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Hélène Lenoir: Entracte
Hélène Lenoir: Son nom d'avant
Hélène Lenoir: Le Magot de Momm

Hélène Lenoir: Entracte (2005)

In this collection of five short stories by Hélène Lenoir – which make far from easy reading – there's a short but oddly immensely revealing sentence towards the end of the final story: 'La vie, la vraie, grouille autour de ce qui est tu' ('Real life swarms around the unspoken.') I think my English translation of the sentence is reasonable, although there are several problems here, the first being that although 'unspoken' translates 'tu' (the past participle of the verb taire, meaning to be silent, tu here means more than that: it refers to the intense complications of that swarming real life, not just to the fact that nothing is said. Taire is not just about being silent, it is about witholding information that could disturb, be harmful, hugely disruptive. 'Unspoken' is also a participial adjective, and only very rarely used as a noun: 'the unspoken' (apart from as the name of a game) is rarely used in English, although the French noun 'non-dit' is common. A 'non-dit' usually belongs to that category of words which dangle, swarm around the unspoken, never really said. I'm convinced that there is no proper English translation of 'non-dit', not even as 'the unspoken', and yet this is very often what Hélène Lenoir's work is about.

In the final short story here, 'L'Infidèle (lit. 'The Unfaithful Man') we don't even know that the nameless man is in fact unfaithful to the woman, but she is obsessed with it, seems a little crazy over it,  but then many of Lenoir's characters are a little crazy. The man is actually going to Switzerland on a business trip, but moving away from the bed she mumbles 'Retourne voir tes putes' ('Go back to your tarts!'). And she's said it, she's given voice to a non-dit!  This is an utterance of seismic proportions, she waits for ages for the effect, an absurd cold blade because to her knowledge he's never used a prostitute, and anyway he makes no reaction. Maybe the sentence was never heard so remains in effect 'non-dit', and the woman's internal monologue debates that this is a good thing, he's not heard the earth-shattering sentence, but on the other hand maybe if he had heard then a cataclysmic row would have been, er, therapeutic, finalising?

There are a number of non-dits in this and the other stories, then: the title story 'L'Entracte', 'Les Étrangères', 'Les Escarpins Rouges', and 'Le Verger' being the others. But also present in most if not all of the stories are preoccupations of the main characters with questions of sex, identity, ideas of flight, but most of all the stifling power of other people, particularly the family (remember Le Magot de Momm). The word L'Entracte (meaning intermission or interval: the man and woman of the eponymous story meet during a classical concert) can be used for all the stories because they happen at a crisis point in a person's life, when the character has to make an important (perhaps vital) life decision. I can fully understand why people love Hélène Lenoir's books, but feel a bit sorry for those who like a quick read, those who are impatient with the (often multiple) internal monologues of her characters.

My Hélène Lenoir posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Hélène Lenoir: Entracte
Hélène Lenoir: Son nom d'avant
Hélène Lenoir: Le Magot de Momm

Hélène Lenoir: Le Magot de Momm (2001)

Hélène Lenoir's Le Magot de Momm depicts an intensely claustrophic situation from which attempts are made to escape, but fail. Momm is sixty-eight and widowed and lives with her thirty-six-year-old daughter Nann (who is also widowed) and Nann's three daughters: Lili (a sixteen-year-old) and the ten-year-old twins Wanda and Violette. The sexual tension is the house is almost palpable, and there is very little communication between the characters.

In a novel a little short of two hundred pages, not a great deal happens. Rather, Le Magot de Momm is written in a cinematographic style, the narrative concentrating on minute details, dissecting actions and psychologies. Misery seems inherent in this household, and Nann yearns to break free, hopes that her lukewarm lover Vincent will commit himself to her.

Although out of the central picture, that is to say not in the asphyxiating house, the worker Mario, mending the gate, is of great importance as he is a young male, dripping not only sweat but also sensuality: Nann even makes a half-hearted effort to escape from the house with him on his motor-bike, although she soon returns to Vincent and the house.

Dan, Lili's boyfriend, also has a role in the narrative, although only a bit part: he is merely the means by which Lili temporarily escapes (on a puny moped) – having found out that Momm keeps her savings in large denomination francs behind the photos in her bedroom. But Dan, very drunk, turns into a monster and Lili has to flee from her dream, falls into the hands of the police and is inevitably taken back to the house, where Momm has discovered that her nest-egg is missing and thinks it's Mario's doing. A very readable book indeed.

My Hélène Lenoir posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Hélène Lenoir: Entracte
Hélène Lenoir: Son nom d'avant
Hélène Lenoir: Le Magot de Momm