“The Roadside Inn” by Emmanuel Moses, visitors’ time – Libération

The novel by the French writer takes up the fable of Philémon and Baucis, mythological heroes of hospitality.

Here is a curious story which contains three, “a story with several voices or several stories with a single voice, the voice which is behind the voices and which is only heard through the plurality of voices”. A story whose buds form a tapestry that is at first glance confusing, where we think we can discern an anamorphosed skull – but we will be undeceived.

The Inn at the End of the Road is almost a romantic prose ballad. Three travelers gather there in a symbolic place, devoid of description except for one detail: a lime tree grows in the middle of its courtyard. The managers are a couple of ex-city dwellers, tired but very much in love. Regenerated by the hospitality which is now their profession, they live in “a present in infinite extension”. Their mysterious visitors are referred to as the Northman, the Westman and “the man behind the mountains”. Chief storyteller, Emmanuel Moses reads the thoughts and memories of this trio who at first do not communicate, before each becomes, at the very end, a «raconteur». Before them, a young woman had stayed briefly, and a man talking to snails, suddenly disappeared. The innkeeper had posted his wanted notice: “Some in the village were compassionate […]others ava