Véronique Olmi: Cet étè-là (2010)

There's a paragraph on pages 101 to 102 in Véronique Olmi's Cet étè-là when fifty-five-year-old Denis talks about his mother, who at times 'loses her head', and Denis asks himself 'why should words always exactly express our thoughts?'. He sees his mother as 'deconstruct[ing] the world and its logic', and they both find themselves laughing stupidly at something others tend to cry over. I found this a fascinating moment, although I have to say that it's the only moment in the book when I thought that Olmi was beginning to speak to me, to break out of the rather conventional content of the novel and begin to say something of real interest. There are certainly a number of moments of interesting psychological insights in the book, although I felt that this paragraph was never surpassed.

Right from the first paragraph we know that there's something wrong – at least from Denis's wife Delphine's point of view – with their marriage: as with 14 July holiday weekends for the last sixteen years, the couple have invited friends to join them at their holiday home in Coutainville on the Cotentin peninsula in the north-west, and Delphine thinks the more people there the better, as they put more distance between herself and Denis.

We know virtually from the beginning that Delphine is leaving Denis for good, and there are problems in the relationships of the other two adult couples. Lola is thirty-eight and regularly comes with a new boyfriend – this time it's with the twenty-six-year-old Samuel, who unsurprisingly comes across as somewhat immature to her: Lola can already see the end. And there are Nicolas and Marie, who are more Delphine and Denis's age, and have been married for many years, although for three years Nicolas has been keeping a secret from her: his breakdown was caused by the fact that he was most probably responsible for the suicide of a female teacher colleague who was having an illicit relationship with a male pupil.

The three couples are of varying financial circumstances, although they're all middle class, but with different reactions to the strange Caliban-type figure Dimitri, a surprisingly shy twenty-year-old who befriends Denis and Delphine's daughter Jeanne (aged sixteen). He's a young man of few – but very unsettling – words who will affect all the characters: Delphine is frightened for Jeanne's (sexual) safety, Nicolas fears that he's the brother of his dead colleague come to seek revenge, Lola is reminded of the child she had at sixteen whom she was forced to send away, etc. The major statement he makes is to say that the pine tree near Denis and Delphine's house is dying: the tree is the main thing that distinguishes the couple from the others, where people congregate, and is an important symbol of their little community.

Towards the end – after the traditional firework display in the village – there's the high drama of Jeanne going missing with Dimitri*, and then, well, nothing much at all: the end of the book is something of a damp squib.


*I forgot to mention that Jeanne doesn't seem to be interested in her smartphone too much. What? She's sixteen! Now that really is stretching credibility to its limits to make way for the plot.

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Véronique Olmi: Le premier amour

Véronique Olmi: Le premier amour (2009)

When Emilie notes that her first lover Dario wants to see her she almost immediately hops into her car and begins the drive from Paris to Genova, Italy. Despite the fact that she's just spent hours preparing for a loving evening celebrating her twenty-five years of marriage to her husband Marc, and despite the fact that she hasn't seen Dario for thirty years and has no idea why he wants to see her.

It's hardly surprising that no one understands what she's up, let alone herself: like Dario, she's now about fifty, although unlike him she has three daughters who have all left home. This is part of the problem: she feels lost, and even tells her eldest – Zoé – that Dario is the only man she's ever loved. Unsurprisingly, Zoé walks away from her mother in disgust, and Emilie at least has the honesty to admit that she'd have done that same.

Emilie meets Zoé on the journey down because Zoé lives in Marseilles and guesses that her mother will pay a visit to Christine (Emilie's sister who has Down's syndrome) in a home not far from Aix-en-Provence, the town where Emilie spends the night. This is the last of a series of meetings that Emilie has made on her way to Italy, although the others have been with strangers, and have had a weirdness that seems to indicate an almost allegorical significance, although that's clearly not intended.

When Emilie arrives at Dario's wealthy home she's surprised to be greeted by Giulietta, his wife of twenty years: something's made Dario lose his memory and Giulietta – who's discovered some diaries that her husband wrote about his obviously enduring memories of Emilie – hopes that her presence will be able to jog his mind out of its amnesia.

Alas, this is fruitless, and attempts to reconstruct the cause of the trauma only worsen things considerably. Dario had grown very attached to Malika, a ten-year-old daughter of illegal immigrants who was a kind of daughter substitute he used to regularly give presents to. But one day when he's trying out his new car the sun gets in his eyes and he hits the young girl, who dies a few days later. Two years after the trauma reconstruction Dario's grief kills him.

This is a very quick read – despite the 278 pages – and frequently a gripping one, but it expects far too much credence on the part of the reader, particularly with the primum mobile. Er, so in preparation for the wedding anniversary celebration Emilie goes to the cellar to fetch a bottle of wine and finds it wrapped up in a copy of Libération, from which she reads a message apparently from her ex-lover telling her to go to his home in Italy, which is exactly what she does. And for some reason Giulietta chooses to leave just one message in a left-leaning newspaper in the hope that Emilie will see it. Umm. These days of course, people simply go to Facebook or Twitter, etc, but we know she's tried Facebook (which Emilie doesn't have an account with) and anyway that would ruin the plot, letting Emilie (and of course the reader) know in advance what would happen when she arrived in Genova. Modern technology continues to make things difficult for authors, which is obviously why Emilie conveniently forgets her phone. The major problem is that it's all too contrived, all so unbelievable.

And why, Livre de Poche, do you show a photo of a much younger woman in the rear view mirror on the cover? Rhetorical question of course.