Appalachia
This rewriting of Dickens’ “David Copperfield” is a huge novel. Deep in the Appalachians, among “the rednecks, the rednecks, the hillbillies”, we follow the adventures of Demon, a poor young boy tossed around by life. Barbara Kingslover discusses the devastation caused by opioids, the painkillers that have ruined the lives of so many Americans. A book as moving as it is heartbreaking. Pulitzer Prize in 2023.
“They call me Demon Copperhead” Barbara Kingslover (ed. Albin Michel)
Los Angeles
“Less than Zero” is the chronicle of a golden but disillusioned youth, between coke rails, alcoholic parties, sad sex and deadly boredom, under the palm trees and the blazing sun of the beautiful Los Angeles neighborhoods. Nothing happens but… we don’t get bored for a minute. An icy, cynical and violent portrait of preppy California. Unavoidable.
“Less than zero” Bret Easton Ellis (ed. Robert Laffont)
New-York
Corinne and Russell have everything to be happy: a sublime apartment in Manhattan, a united family, dream jobs. But after September 11, their perfect world slowly cracked. A beautiful novel about broken dreams, where love and death intertwine, by the best chronicler of New York life, the immense Jay McInerney.
“The Good Life” Jay McInerney (ed. Points)
Massachusetts
A university professor in Massachusetts is sidelined for an allegedly racist remark. When we also learn that he put the faculty cleaning lady in his bed – a woman who barely knows how to read and write – it’s too much… Philip Roth denounces, 20 years before his appearance, wokism and its excesses, this invention made in the USA. Masterful, as always. And very politically incorrect. So much the better.
“The stain”, Philip Roth (ed. Gallimard)
Boston
In “Mystic River”, adapted for the cinema by Clint Eastwood, Denis Lehane tells the life of three childhood friends forever broken by a terrible tragedy. A drama that leads to another, years later. As is often the case, the king of crime fiction places the action in Boston, a city which becomes a character in its own right in each of his novels. Forget Harvard and the nice neighborhoods. Here, we immerse ourselves in a popular, working-class, sometimes violent Boston, which we find in films like “The Town”
“Mystic River”, Dennis Lehane (ed. Payot and Rivages)
L’Alaska
Head to Alaska with David Vann and his excellent “Sukkwan Island”. A father and his son come together for a trip into the great outdoors, in the heart of breathtaking nature, amid sumptuous landscapes. But even the purest air in the world can give you good reason to suffocate. Because nothing is going to happen as planned. A relentless psychological novel, impossible to forget. First novel, a masterstroke.
“Sukkwan Island” David Vann (éd. Gallmeister)
San Francisco
In San Francisco, young girls from an upscale neighborhood staunchly maintain that they have crossed paths with a pervert. In the small group of four friends, three are affirmative, but the fourth questions the attitude of the man we met earlier. Anodyne? When you’re a teenager, nothing is trivial… A story about lies and friendship, with San Francisco and the ocean as a backdrop. Captivating from start to finish, until the final twist. Our 2024 favorite.
“Tame the waves” Vendela Vida (ed. Albin Michel)
The Midwest
The life of the Gladney family, who lives in a peaceful small town in the Midwest (imagine a typically American setting with its campus, its shopping centers, its “Desperate Housewives”-style residential neighborhoods), is turned upside down by an industrial accident, which blows a highly toxic cloud towards the city. Should we believe the hubbub of the news, this constant background noise which frightens more than it reassures? Should we stay or flee? What to do, who to believe, where to go?
“Background noise” Don DeLillo (ed. Actes Sud)
Florida
In Miami, Trelawny, born in America to Jamaican parents, questions his identity. Not dark enough for some, too light for others, he feels black but thinks like a white person. And struggles to define himself, as he experiences racism from his peers and even within his own community. A highly acclaimed first novel, to be found in the excellent collection Terres d’ A m é rique by Albin Michel.
“If I survive you” Jonathan Escoffery (ed. Albin Michel)
Atlanta
With Darktown, Thomas Mullen takes us back to 1948. In Atlanta, the police recruit for the first time black officers who have practically fewer rights than the thugs they must arrest. The classic investigation – a sordid murder – gives rise to a meticulous exploration of segregationist America and ordinary racism in the 1950s, a prosperous era for the Ku Klux Klan. An evil that America has not yet managed to rid itself of. A nugget.
“Darktown” Thomas Mullen (ed. Payot and Rivages)
America through its social subjects
- The white hillbillies. “Hillbilly Elegy” by JD Vance. This name is certainly not foreign to you. Yes, this JD Vance is indeed the same as Donald Trump’s current running mate. A few years ago, it was more “moderate” and much less worrying. At the time, when Donald Trump had just been elected, the young lawyer James David returned to his native lands, in the “Rust Belt”, a region formerly a flagship of industry and now poor for Appalachia, plagued by drugs, where the term “white trash” takes on its full meaning… which the author explains brilliantly. Why and how did these middle-class whites voting “Democrat” become penniless and hopeless hillbillies, lured by the sirens of Trumpism? An immersion in this America that is difficult to understand and which so deserves to be known and heard. “Hillbilly Elegy”, JD Vance (Globe ed.)
- IVG turns black. This prolific author is a visionary. By placing the plot of his thriller (which we understand is anticipatory) in a Los Angeles transfigured by the omnipotence of pro-lifers, the American author certainly did not think to what extent, a year or two later, a part of America would look like this: a country where the law prevents you from having an abortion (in certain states), where the few clinics still practicing abortion are violently stormed and where doctors and patients risk their lives passing through the doors of these centers of abortion. A spine-chilling thriller, especially since Douglas Kennedy depicts, without knowing it, a part of America that is very real today.
“Men are afraid of the light” Douglas Kennedy (ed. Belfond)
- Abortion (again) which is tearing America apart. Joyce Carol Oates is a genius of American literature. Over the course of these 900 pages, the author brings lots of nuances to the heated debate on abortion, today the flagship subject of the campaign led by Kamala Harris. Right today more than threatened throughout the country, abortion is experienced and the debate is understood through the eyes of the defenders of each camp. Between pro-life “soldiers of God” and defenders of women’s rights to control their bodies, it is all the violence of a crucial and divisive subject that is dealt with here.
“A book of American martyrs” Joyce Carol Oates (ed. Philippe Rey)
- Not a golden retirement. The subprime crisis, around fifteen years ago, everyone talked about it. But in this story relating real events, we experience it from the inside through human stories that could still find thousands of echoes in the United States. They had a house (and an end of loan to repay), a little money on the side and retirement in the sights… The crisis took everything from them. They found a mobile roof: that of their converted van which transports them from state to state, through temporary work contracts, from Amazon warehouses to National Parks. They sleep in sometimes magical landscapes, but count their dollars from the beginning of the month, at the age when they should no longer be working hard. A report that reads like a novel and which sheds light on these forgotten people of the third age in an edifying way. Adapted for the screen, it won several Academy Awards.
« Nomadland », Jessica Bruder (ed. J’ai Lu)
- The excluded from society. Russell Banks, who died last year, is undoubtedly one of the keenest observers of American society. A progressive, the author has never held back anything in his novels which tell the story of the era and, often, what we pretend not to see there. It’s striking here. The Kid is a young sex offender punished by an electronic bracelet, in total break with society, whose only companion since childhood has been an iguana, and his only shelter today is a tent installed under a viaduct. And even that, we’re going to deprive him. In the humid heat of this Florida city, there are several “outcasts” like him, invisible and yet not invisible, incapable of hanging on to the wagon, stigmatized as waste of society that it would be better to get rid of. A poignant story that hits the nail on the head where it hurts: about an America that leaves on the side of the road, without looking back, those it doesn’t know what to do with.
“Distant memory of the skin” Russell Banks (ed. Babel)
- Cross the border. Another subject at the center of the table in this election (and previous ones): immigration at the border between Mexico and the United States. Or, the dream of a better life. But before reaching El Dorado, a mother and her son will have to, like tens of thousands of Hispanics before them, find a way to survive on this clandestine route leading to the border, along which everyone wants to take advantage of their distress. A moving novel about the tragedies experienced by these migrants and the survival instinct that pushes them to try to live this sometimes cruel “American dream”.
“American Dirt” by Jeanine Cummins (ed. Philippe Rey)
