My favorite books for going on vacation (1/2)

Gross National Happiness – François Roux (The Pocket Book)

While the Gross National Product is an economic index which precisely determines the wealth of a country, Gross national happiness is a captivating political and social fresco that assesses our capacity to be happy today, from adolescent dreams to adult compromises.

On May 10, 1981, the face of the new French president gradually appeared on all televisions: François Mitterrand had just won the election. An intense joy will then be released among his supporters: “ We could still dream “. A crazy hope that signals the time for change.
Rodolphe, Tanguy, Paul and Benoît are friends. 1981 is the year of the baccalaureate and of all possibilities. But thirty years later, where are they? Everything has changed: their personalities, but their country too.
Sentimental, social or political, this fresco takes everything in its path. We knew them with the advent of François Mitterrand, we find them again with that of François Hollande.

Dreams of economic and emotional success are scrutinized between “ the warm hopes of adolescence ” and the reality of the adult world: aborted desires, money that alienates, disappointed loves or unjust illnesses, and always ” the irreducibility of its social origins “. François Roux achieves a true novelistic feat by captivating us for more than 700 pages through the personal history of these four friends and the evolution of our country. What is happiness, ultimately?

The Club of Incorrigible Optimists – Jean-Michel Guenassia (Le Livre de Poche)

In the back room of a Parisian café in the 1960s, political refugees from Eastern Europe meet to share their despair. Between an initiation novel and a historical fresco, disillusionment with major ideologies is present, but also hope for a promise of humanity.

While the war, which we modestly call “events”, sets the Algerian maquis ablaze, the French ignore the reality of the dictatorship raging behind the Iron Curtain. Fratricidal debates infiltrate homes, while the country undergoes lasting transformation.

Brilliant reconstruction of France in the 1950s and a very beautiful initiatory novel at a time when all hopes were allowed, The Club of Incorrigible Optimists is also a declaration of love for literature. A literary alchemy which is sensual and which we also find in the learning of the first emotions of the main character, Michel. He learns, explores and discovers the complexity of the world around him, opposing psychologies, divergent feelings and a sclerotic social reality.

Despite the injustices and confinements, this novel emanates a joy of living and of still believing in a better world, an unbridled optimism. As if the back room of Balto created by Jean-Michel Guenassia alone constituted a secret room of hopes. An exhilarating novel!

Patria – Fernando Aramburu (Actes Sud)

ETA Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (“Basque Country and Freedom”). Three letters that inspire as much terror for some as hope for others. Present on the political and military front, its commitment to the armed struggle is measured in hundreds of victims killed or mutilated after its dissolution in 2018.
The action of the book begins a few years earlier. 2012, the organization has just announced that it is laying down its arms. Bittori, wife of a victim murdered in the mid-90s, thinks it is time for her to return to the village she left when her husband died.

This is the starting point for remembering past events, including his broken friendship with Miren. One is the wife of a successful business leader and refuses to pay the exorbitant revolutionary tax asked of her, while the other is the mother of an ETA activist who will passionately engage in the armed struggle. They were more than friends, sisters who hadn’t spoken to each other for decades.

Thanks to an effective and sentimental narration, Fernando Aramburu composes a picture, a web of reminiscences in which memory catches the events distilled in groups of two or three chapters in the most complete chronological disorder to better reconstruct his web.

The story of an early anti-Franco organization which transformed itself from a liberation movement into a terrorist mafia: the support of supporters which may seem blind, the reconstruction of all the broken lives, the dead or the thousands of collateral victims, this perpetual burning which sets these souls on fire at the slightest ember, everything is approached with lucidity, sobriety and above all a lot of humanity. It is the history of the Basque Country, Spanish and French combined.

Patria is an admirable novel, written from a human perspective, which restores the nobility of the romantic fresco. The mental pages of a human conscience violated on the altar of violence and whose only hope lies in forgiveness and repentance.

The Principal’s Women – Lluis Llach (Actes Sud)

Powerfully romantic, The Principal’s Women takes us into the history of a rich wine estate in the Catalan countryside in the 20th century. The condition of women, wars or Francoism, Lluis Llach mixes up destinies by following the common thread of an unsolved murder and with the help of a tightly drawn narration.

When phylloxera struck the Catalan vines in 1893, Maria was twenty years old and, to her misfortune, four brothers. The future of the family will now be decided in Barcelona, ​​where the patriarch has begun to settle his sons. No place for a girl in this plan: Maria will stay in the village to carry the family colors high, condemned to wither away among the infected vines. As the price of the sacrifice, she will inherit the entire domain, the Principal, which with unparalleled intelligence and stubbornness she will succeed, against all odds, in making prosper. Like after her her daughter, then her granddaughter.

Running over more than a century, The Principal’s Women is a family saga full of secrets and passions, dominated by three proud women, three Marias, eccentric and unforgettable.

Return to Cuba – Laurent Bénégui (Pocket)

Are you ready to leave for a distant destination that will take you on the tumultuous roads of History and well-kept family secrets? You will have to go a long way to discover the truth…

Starting from a quest for family origins, born from a simple anecdote, Laurent Bénégui unfolds a true historical saga in the heat of Cuba, between colonization and revolution. Return to Cuba is an intimate and exciting epic of unsaid and revelations, sometimes ubuesque too. A fresco of great romantic power.

Eureka Street – Robert McLiam Wilson (South Acts)

Rare are the books that we would dare to call a masterpiece. In my opinion, Eureka Street is one of them. Belfast, 90s and a thunderous friendship between a Catholic and a Protestant. On the thread of life between comedy and tragedy. Irreverent and irresistible!

We are in Belfast at the beginning of the 1990s. In the midst of the Northern Irish conflict, we learned to ignore it. So like everywhere when we are twenty, thirty years old, we traffic in poverty, we fall in love, we forget ourselves, we drink a lot, we indulge, we fall in love again and we invent other lives.
Jake Jackson, the Catholic, his friend Chuckie Lurgan, the Protestant, taunt their despair with what remains of lightness. At the bottom of pints of beer or in the urgency of a laugh or a word of love, there is all that remains of humanity. A superb novel by Robert McLiam Wilson.

The Song of Achilles – Madeline Miller (Pocket)

Aristos Achaion, the greatest of all Greeks. This is the nickname of Archille, legendary hero, whose myth is masterfully told to us here. The fury of Greek mythology through the quest for honor obtained by spilled blood, but also that of absolute love. From a pen with exemplary fluidity, this story is a passionate read.

With Madeline Miller, we enter a narrative where the breath of romance will leave you no respite. The Song of Achilles or Circe will plunge you into the heart of the Trojan War with great mastery, without sacrificing the quality of the documentary work and getting as close as possible to the original myths. Reading Madeline Miller means finding yourself at the heart of tragedies and founding stories through the magic of literature.