Jean Teulé: L'Œil de Pâques (1992)

L'Œil de Pâques is Jean Teulé's second novel, and is far from being his best. It begins fifteen million years ago, then cycles closer and closer to the  present until it begins the story proper about halfway through. Up to then we encounter many recurring words and themes, one of the main ones being Calais and the Channel tunnel, which incidentally was first mooted (but without success) to Napoleon in 1805 by the engineer Albert Mathieu-Favier: and there are his designs of it online to prove it.

It would take a long time to say what it's about, so instead I'll try to describe some of the characters and action. Pâque is the central character and she escapes from her hippie mother, who is French but living in India, but thinks she's being spiritual by giving herself sexually to the locals: towards the end she realises that she's just being used and blows up herself and about a hundred Tamils. Stainer is the cop who's hopelessly corrupt and steals a fair amount of the cannabis he confiscates, who fires a gun repeatedly at his damp walls to get rid of his frustration, and who lets Louis off a potential murder charge because he can fix his walls. Lucy teaches Pâque music, but she's out of her mind, living on seven eggs a day and polishing her gold and silver, which she hides in a drawer – she also has twenty-seven locks on her flat door. Those are just a few of the eccentrics. It was only on reading this book that I realised that obsession is a major theme in Jean Teulé's work.

The novel is almost entirely set in Calais and just a few of the repeated words, which underline continuity, form linkages, etc, are 'Simple Vice', which is a river and also the name of Pâque's (and her half-brother Thomas's) father: yes, I've not made a mistake there; Stainer's damp-swollen walls can be twinned with Pâque's silicon-swollen lips; the name Lucy relates to the Beatles 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' (or LSD, as drugs are frequent here); Pâque's nails are maquillés, and on two occasions Teulé uses his own expression 'made up like an English woman'; etc.

Looking at some of the reviews of this novel I can understand why it confused some people: it's far too clever for its own good.

My Jean Teulé posts:
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Jean Teulé: L'Œil de Pâques
Jean Teulé: Le Montespan | Monsieur Montespan
Jean Teulé: Le Magasin des suicides | Suicide Shop

Jean Teulé: Le Montespan | Monsieur Montespan (2008)

The definite article in the original French title is actually italicised: Le (as opposed to La) Montespan, indicating that the emphasis of Jean Teulé's novel is on the Marquis (rather than the Marquise) de Montespan. In other words, instead of the usual interest in Louis XIV's mistress, it's on her husband.

From the writer of Le Magazin des suicides, this is again a very humorous book, although I find it much better, one of the reasons perhaps being that it's based on factual information, no matter how bizarre – or grotesque – that may seem.

We have Louis-Henri de Pardaillan, otherwise known as Montespan, marrying Françoise (later named Athénaïs), and them having almost non-stop sex. Louis-Henri is particularly smitten, although they've almost no money partly due to their extravagant lifestyle, and Madame de Montespan insists on continuing to live the high life in central Paris while the debts increase.

Louis-Henri decides to take part in various battles with little risk to his life but he's thinking of the possiblility of being favourably recognised by the sun king. However, it's Louis-Henri's beautiful wife whom Louis XIV recognises, and it isn't long before she joins the king in his bed, in fact becomes the royal favourite. Such things were accepted in those days, and indeed it was viewed as a kind of compliment for a person's wife to be so recognised.

But the Marquis de Montespan doesn't see it like that, insults the king, attaches huge antlers to his own carriage (as a sign of his being cuckolded), is the laughing stock of Paris, is briefly imprisoned, and then exiled to his native Gascony.

This novel is very much a story of Louis-Henri's unceasing unrequited love for his wife, but also the story of the machinations of Louis XIV and his court attempting to buy Louis-Henri off in exchange for him keeping his mouth shut and avoiding negative comments from the clergy: after all, what Louis is doing is a sin according to the highly influential Catholic Church. You can almost detect the spin doctors to come a few centuries after.

I particularly liked some expressions used here. 'Aller à Naples sans passer par les ponts' (lit. 'Going to Naples without taking the bridges') is a reference to homosexuality and is a slight variant of the expression 'Aller à Naples sans passer par les monts', a reference to catching a sexually transmitted disease. And how about 'Le cardinal loge à la motte' (lit. the cardinal is lodging in the mound') for menstruation?

My Jean Teulé posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Jean Teulé: L'Œil de Pâques
Jean Teulé: Le Montespan | Monsieur Montespan
Jean Teulé: Le Magasin des suicides | Suicide Shop

Jean Teulé: Le Magasin des suicides (2007)

The subject of Le Magasin des suicides is just that: a suicide shop, a place where all manner of items – nooses with ropes of different lengths, sharpened sabres and ceremonial kimonos for sappuka (hara-kiri being considered a vulgar expression), heavy weights for drowning or defenestration, poisoned sweets or liquid concoctions, etc. The shop's motto is 'Vous avez raté votre vie? Avec nous, vous réussirez votre mort!' ('You've failed in life? With us, you'll succeed in death!').

The book is set in France in the city of Religions Oubliées ('Forgotten Religions') at some vague future time when the currency is the euro-yen and ecological disasters are commonplace occurrences. Depression is rife and suicide a normal fact of life, given government approval with few provisos. Nearby commercial outlets are named after famous suicide figures: the florist's is called Tristan et Iseult after France's star-crossed lovers, the restaurant François Vatel after the famous cook, and the disco Kurt Cobain after Nirvana.

The Tuvache ('Kill Cow'? 'You, cow'? No, I give up) family has held Le Magasins des suicides for ten generations, and is proud of its emotional investment in the depressive, the sombre, the pessimist, in anything morbid and joyless. The family are all named after famous suicide figures: the father is Mishima (after the writer Yukio); the mother is Lucrèce (after the legendary Roman figure Lucretia); the elder son Vincent after Van Gogh, and he's anorexic and has his head in bandages because of his pain; and daughter Marilyn's name of course needs no explanation, although Marilyn Tuvache is rather fat.

So the family thrives, or rather gets by very well, on profound miserabilism. But then along comes the latest addition to the family – Alan, who becomes the family's Polyanna, full of optimism and seeing positive in everything negative.* He is obviously the bane of the family.

However, Alan's optimism begins to spread contagion in the family, he sabotages the Tuvache's suicide goods, turns the family concern into a thriving joke shop, and transforms his relatives: Marilyn becomes desirable and gets engaged to Ernest (named after Hemingway, of course), Vincent starts eating and can't get enough pancakes, the whole family would rather die than lose Alan, Vincent even takes off his bandages to save his life, although the final four words – perhaps necessarily – change the climax.

I didn't particularly find the end disappointing – more the whole thing, in a way: this is inventive, full of imagination, even gripping, very funny; but it's also predictable, awfully contrived and artificial, totally unbelievable but then that's part of its attraction. I'm very glad I read it, and shall read more of Jean Teulé. But there's just something irredeemably silly about it. I suspect that's the point. 

*It takes more than a third of the way through this short novel to discover that he's named after Alan Turing, who died from an apple he'd poisoned because society wasn't then ready to accept homosexuality. The Tuvache family sell kits with a poisoned apple and painting equipment only on the condition that the buyer wills the apple painting to the shop – they have a large number of apple paintings on display, including one in the Cubist style and a blue one executed by a colour blind suicide case.

My Jean Teulé posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Jean Teulé: L'Œil de Pâques
Jean Teulé: Le Montespan | Monsieur Montespan
Jean Teulé: Le Magasin des suicides | Suicide Shop