Two centuries ago, Zola described characters prey to the temptation of stealing in department stores. Social vice adapting to its times, it is now the essence which is the subject of a tragic mowing and romanticized by the very poetic Rachel M. Cholz.
From the pen of a new generation of novelists, furiously committed, for whom the revolution will pass as much through the distortion of language as through the power of the story, the dystopia has suddenly changed sides. As a sign of the anxiety that lurks and the anger that rises, it has deserted futuristic worlds, robotics or space to anchor itself violently in present time and invite itself in small touches into all parts of Literature. The disillusioning tomorrows have given way to the derailed today and Rachel M. Cholz is one of the faces of this disturbing mutation. A graduate of the National School of Visual Arts of La Cambre, specialized in writing for artistic installations and theatrical performances, accustomed to declaiming her texts during open mic evenings dedicated to sound poetry, the thirty-year-old was until there, the symbol of a literature that is written outside the books but certain burning stories deserve the long time, that of the novel and fiction.
AT GOLDEN PRICE
A young girl wanders adrift in the suburbs of Brussels and crosses paths with Alix, a boy who begs during the day but who, when night falls, siphons off the tanks of all the vehicles and machines he meets to steal a few precious drops of gasoline sold at a high price. The smuggler has a plan to give himself another life and offers the narrator to be part of it. He discovered the existence of a secret pipeline connecting a refinery to a storage depot. A little DIY, a tap and you’re guaranteed an unlimited supply. But the pierced pipes have ears and very quickly the rumor spreads, stirring up the desires of the worst characters who slumber in the world of the margins.
Breathtaking noir novel, vitriolic social firestorm, trashy and sensual poetic flight, Pipeline had to Mad Max in the veins. Forty-five years after George Miller’s cult film, released in the middle of the oil crisis, depicting a motorized dystopian world, obsessed with gasoline, Rachel M. Cholz inflicts on us in any case the same brutal uppercut. Because in an era swept by the climate crisis, in search of miracle green energy, capable of stopping human self-destruction, his first novel poses a deliberately provocative paradox. It tells of the merciless war waged by a twilight society for which oil is a treasure and the promise of a more livable future. Warning, highly flammable literary product.
PIPELINE
RACHEL M. CHOLZ
THRESHOLD (224 P., €19)
By Léonard Desbrières
