Writing a book with four hands is a journey strewn with pitfalls, which requires perfect osmosis between the two partners. Valérie Dayre, who has already published around thirty works, and her companion Pierre Leterrier, authors of fifteen novels, have mastered this literary challenge through four collaborations. After the magical village, a fiction set in Berry, published last year, they once again made common cause to build an original creation, Camille in the Land of Words.
Their young heroine, a schoolgirl angry with spelling, tackles a banal writing subject: telling a story where animals talk. Not enthusiastic at first, she gradually gets into the game, juggling with language, with the help of two talkative protagonists, a camel and a laurel tree.
A schoolgirl dragged into a hellish spiral
This adventure drags him, against his will, into an infernal spiral. She dreams of terrible things, sees herself condemned to beheading, exiled to a strange desert, locked in a sack, and subjected to dangerous challenges.
Adventures illustrated by the subtitle of the work Spelling is a combat sport. « She finally does a very nice job, underlines Pierre Leterrier, and for our part, we had a lot of fun writing this book. »
Word games and puns
When asked about the best way to successfully perform this four-handed exercise, the two authors admit: “We don’t have a ready-made recipe. We start with a common idea, sometimes suggested by one of us, and everyone makes their contribution. There are no rules, and what was initially planned can evolve, as was the case with this book where the main character was to be a boy. As we work, doors open and we do a lot of cleaning to get the final version. »
Which results, in this case, in a work full of word games and puns, which is aimed primarily at young people, but which will not fail to interest adults who enjoy the French language.
“Camille in the Land of Words”, published by L’Atelier du Poisson Soluble. Available in bookstores for €13.
