With this new novel, “and the light will be”, Béatrice Diarra stages three women whose roads will cross. The author Clermontoise delivers a dark story there that mixes feminism and commitment against the wounds of our society with infinite poetry and a lot of humor. A treat.
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Essential
The story begins with the death of Joachim and depicts the struggles and abandonments of the main characters, Rose, Agathe and Célestine, reflecting the author’s sensitivity towards their routes.
The style of Diarra, both fluid and full of lightness, balances the dark elements of the story with touches of humor and poetry, while being tainted with a few shells which will be corrected during the next draw.
Béatrice Diarra set foot in the dish from her first book, the excellent and very militant No waves (L’Harmattan, 2020) which took place in the school environment.
With this new novel, she changes her register. And the light will be (Editions from time to time) starts with an end! The proof, the first chapter is called “This is the end”. Then comes “no future”, and further on, we find a “hey jo” to say how much the author has a natural inclination for music: “Indeed, there is a rock’n’roll side although I do not be personally. I would tend to be more punk than rock. The Rock’n’Roll side of the novel is its subversive side, but the whole book is rocked by music, all kinds of music. »»
News themes
And the light will be So begins with a death, that of Joachim. The novel deals with abandonment, breaking into the journey of the three main characters: Rose, Agathe and Célestine. Three women who, each in their own way, have character traits of the author always full of empathy and tenderness for her characters, she loves them all in one way or another: “Rose for example has a teenage side that suits me. Through the different characters, I can allow myself to approach topical themes such as feminism, sexism, homophobia and racism. With Guillaume, nicknamed the “sea calf”, I don’t care about reality TV and our society. Before, the programs equivalent to today’s reality TV transmitted knowledge, they allowed themselves to be cultivated, now, the principle is to do not care about the figure of people, it is to make fun of others. Some situations of the novel are super realistic. To the point where the scene of surgical intervention for example is of such precision that it must have been experienced to describe it thus. It looks like it: “Even if I romanticized everything, it corresponds to what I saw, what I have experienced”. A form of catharsis in a way, classic process in literature and in any other form of art.
This Is The End
Overall, And the light will be is quite black. However, this impression is reduced by the agility of style, by narrative fluidity, by humor and flashes worthy of the greatest: “It is said that humor is the energy of despair, the dark side of the novel is tempered by a certain poetry and by humor precisely. These genius features that dot the book sound like punchlines, they give relief to the whole without falling into the constrained and forced style exercise of the cliffhanger type. They are innate.
And the light will be Put the words in the mouth, he is spicy and this, despite the lack of rigor of the publisher who let shells pass. Obviously, they will have disappeared in the second draw of the book since the first is almost exhausted.
