This is the 5th and final selection of our Heroine Grand Prix, which will be awarded in May, in Paris, at the Raphael hotel.
French novel: Who livesby Valérie Zenatti
The author. Valérie Zenatti is a novelist, translator of Aharon Appelfeld, children’s author ofA bottle in the sea in Gaza. Who lives is his eighth novel.
The book. Faced with the violence of the world, Mathilde, a history teacher, decides to go to Israel, without certainty about what she will find. The novel was written before October 7 and Gaza, but, as is often the case in great novels, there is a form of premonition, here it would be to describe landscapes, women and men of good will, to listen to the music, to laugh sometimes, before the chaos. CS
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Organic/Trials: A week of silenceby Florence Besson
The author. Florence Besson is a journalist, her first novel, Landingwas a hymn to nature, and it is silence that inspires this new story.
The book. After a stroke, an “accident” as she writes, she decides, to recharge her batteries, to move away from the fury and vast hubbub of the world. She will spend a week of silence with the Jesuits, by the sea, and she testifies day by day. There is surprise, doubts, questions, meals, swims and the path of repair to face the world again. BB
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Comics/graphic novels: The undrinkablesby Julia Wertz
The author. Born in San Francisco and living in Brooklyn, Julia Wertz is a star of American independent comics, author, among others, of the fabulous Entrailles de New York.
The book. After a jeep accident in the jungle of Puerto Rico on her 30th birthday, Julia Wertz returns to the journey that led her from alcoholism to sobriety, between withdrawal treatments and toxic love affairs. All told with dazzling intelligence and deadpan humor that fuses tragedy and comedy. MTH
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Foreign novel: Go where the river takes you by Shelley Read
The author. Shelley Read lives in Colorado and taught literature, writing, and environmental studies at the University of Gunnison for thirty years.
The book. Victoria Nash, 17, runs the family farm in Iola, Colorado. When she falls in love, she is unaware that her life will be forever changed, for better and for worse… A saga carried by a heroine who fights both against the elements and against the society that surrounds her, against a backdrop of landscapes of the American West. MTH
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