Lucien d'Azay: À la recherche de Sunsiaré : Une vie (2005)

In some respects Lucien d'Azay's À la recherche de Sunsiaré resembles Didier Blonde's books: recovering people from oblivion by detective work. Certainly Blonde's Leïlah Mahi 1932 (2015) is called to mind: a strikingly attractive young woman about whom very little is known. This applied to Sunsiaré de Larcône, who died in a car crash in 1962, which took the famous and highly noted 'Hussard' Roger Nimier with her. She had just published her first novel, La Messagère, which she saw as just a 'trigger' for what she was due to bring to the literary world. Obviously her ambitions were killed along with her, but just who was she? In a detective story which resembles a biography but also (unlike Blonde's investigations) contains autobiographical elements, D'Azay tries to find the answers.

Sunsiaré was born in Rambertvillers (Vosges) modestly, as Suzy Durupt, to a car mechanic father and a mother who was a hairdresser, although her mother remarried the pied-noir Diego Larcone (without circumflex), a soldier in 1947. Suzy was brought up by her paternal grandparents, who had a restaurant in Rambertvillers. Suzy left school at the age of 14. 

D'Azay's account is fascinating, containing as it does many first-hand accounts of who Sunsiaré was, her change of name (to go with her change of image ), plus many letters to add to our knowledge of her. Sunsiaré was what we might describe as an intellectual groupie, but she was a force to be reckoned with. She had many conversations and correspondences with literary figures, such as Julien Gracq (whose Château d'Argol and La Rivage des Syrtes influenced her a great deal), and other friends of hers included Guy Dupré and Raymond Abellio. This book is not much light to 400 pages, and is surely without question the definitive work on this obscure and entrancing individual.

Sunsiaré, Columbarium, Père-Lachaise, Paris 20e.

Marie Nimier: La Reine du silence (2004)

Marie Nimier's story of her search for her father is in effect a search for herself too. Prominent writer Roger Nimier died in an Aston Martin in 1962. It is quite possible that the beautiful Sunsiaré de Larcône, who also died in the crash and had just published her first novel, was driving the car. La Reine du silence strives to pull together the various and many pieces of a jigsaw in an attempt to discover the mystery of Marie's father, who died when she was only five.

Marie Nimier tries to draw on the obviously very limited memories that she has of her father, makes investigations, questions people who knew him, makes many digressions and speculations, but gradually – through the various snippets of information that she finds – she arrives at truths that are far from comforting.

Along the way we learn of her paternal grandfather Paul Nimier being an engineer who devised the first talking clock, of her paternal grandmother Christiane Roussel being a violinist before her marriage. We also learn that, after several failed tests, Marie eventually gained a full driving licence. We never learn why, at twenty-five, she jumped into the Seine in a suicide attempt, but then she doesn't know either.

Roger Nimier was a heavy drinker and sometimes did things that are very odd and disturbing, such as holding a gun to her slightly older brother's head, or stubbing out a cigarette in the plastic yoke of the egg in Marie children's tea set. There were rows with his wife, whom he once grabbed round the throat, and they were getting divorced at the time of his death.

The worse blow for Marie, though, is when she sees some of her father's possessions being auctioned. After seeing a letter he's written using a pseudonym and pretending to be a manufacturer of dildos, she reads this about herself at the end of another letter:

'By the way, Nadine had a daughter yesterday.

I immediately went to drown her in the Seine so as not to hear her anymore.

See you soon, I hope.

                                    Roger Nimier'

In a postcard once, Roger wrote to Marie: 'WHAT DOES THE QUEEN OF SILENCE SAY?'

Of course, if the 'queen of silence' says anything, she'll no longer be the queen of silence. So Marie Nimier chooses to write.

An amazing book.

My Marie Nimier posts:
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Marie Nimier: La Reine du silence
Marie Nimier: La Girafe | The Giraffe

Paris 2015: Père-Lachaise Columbarium #4: Sunsiaré

'SUNSIARÉ

1935–1962'

Sunsiaré de Larcône is Suzy Durupt's assumed name. She was a model and an actor who was very interested in Julien Gracq and wrote one novel: La Messagère (1962). She died in a car crash in the 'Hussard' Roger Nimier's Aston Martin and is the subject of Lucien d'Azay's biography À la recherche de Sunsarié: une vie (2005).