Mars or die
Kevin and Amber, 31, seem like a solid couple. Together for twelve years, they live post-adolescent lives in Vancouver, watching day and night over their “children” – the cannabis plants they grow in their apartment. But if Kevin appreciates sofa evenings and is satisfied with having Amber by his side, she, a former gym champion with Olympic ambitions shattered by an injury, dreams of elsewhere. As luck would have it, Geoff Task, a megalomaniac and soulless tech billionaire, launches an international competition: at the end of a reality TV game, a man and a woman will be sent to Mars. Because Amber is a die-hard, her need for space suddenly turns into a crazy desire to go into space. Leaving Kevin at his TV sets, she throws herself wholeheartedly into this one-way ticket for adventure.
Willis grants his characters complexity, paradoxes, moods, and gives free rein to his cynicism
The Canadian Deborah Willis has a crazy sense of pitch, dialogue and situations, but the charm of this first novel, which reads like one would “binge” the last season of “Koh-Lanta”, lies above all in its tone. Going against his well-defined dramaturgy, which satirizes reality TV by borrowing its narrative codes, Willis grants his characters complexity, paradoxes, moods, and gives free rein to his cynicism. Thus, his project is revealed as the story unfolds, and big questions are asked: what is a successful life? How to continue to love yourself when everyday life extinguishes the flame? And above all, what (and who) can we rely on to act quickly and strongly while the planet is burning? Beneath its sour candy trappings, “Girlfriend on Mars” hides a contemporary tragedy, energetic and desperate. “Girlfriend on mars”, by Deborah Willis, translated from English by Clément Baude (Rivages, 487 p.).
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Despite its title, “Novel de gare” is not at all a book to recommend to public transport users. The risk of laughing to yourself and appearing like a madman, an idiot, or both, is far too high. Or the story of two losers from the Ile-de-France region who decided to go on an adventure by train, but, be careful, not in a comfortable TGV, no, in a freight car, without tickets or the slightest idea of the final destination. The narrator has only found Simon, alias Buck, to accompany him: a friend who wishes him well, but who is of no use. They want to be modern-day “hobos”, they are cardboard explorers, who dreamed of Samarkand and will barely reach Pouilly sur-Loire. Philibert Humm, who received the Interallié prize for “Roman Fleuve” in 2022, could be the grandson of Jerome K. Jerome, the son of Pierre Desproges, the half-brother of Fabrice Caro… well, he is of the lineage people who write at the same time very well, very funny and with a form of cheerful disenchantment which delights on every page. And the worst is that we end up learning lots of things, about the freight stations in the center of France, the reliefs of the Clermont-Ferrand region, and above all about the unsuspected joy of carving the road at random . Irresistible. “Station novel”, by Philibert Humm (Ecuador, 231 p.).
