Every week, we invite you to read a new book, a classic or a book to rediscover.
Hunting table by Arnaud Guillon
Arnaud Guillon is one of our writers whose talent is still too little known and he excels at exploring the impulses of the heart, in their lights and in their shadows. The proof with Hunting table published in 2015. For a weekend, Manon and Vincent go to Normandy to visit his parents. He is an architect in a prominent firm, she runs a Parisian gallery. The couple formed by these young thirty-somethings is not doing very well and the prospect of a vacation in Sicily seems like a last chance. No children between them, despite Manon’s desire: this slow poison has done its work. But for now, it is a question of putting on a good face.
Arnaud Guillon
Which is easy with Claire and Jean, Vincent’s parents, seniors as fulfilled as they are radiant who seem to have stepped out of a life insurance advert. At the Villa Dalila with a view of the Ocean, champagne is chilled in a bucket, people drink Saumur-Champigny, they feast on salads and roasted sea bass, the sun falls into the glasses, conversations fly, they move from club chairs to an old Chesterfield, they put an old sailboat back in the water. Everything is elegance and relaxation. The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie… Until Eric, an old family friend who has lived in New York for a long time, invites himself. Between the dashing fifty-something and Vincent, relations have been strained for a long time, but social comedy and civility prevail. We will not reveal any more of the episodes of this Hunting table which, beyond the expected events, reserves its share of surprises.
Create emotion
Arnaud Guillon’s readers will find here his delicate art, knowing how to plant a climate, an atmosphere, a light, a perfume. The memory of past happiness comes back sharply, like this summer in Cadaqués full of gaiety and green water. Manon thinks for a moment of the films of Claude Sautet and ” those suspended moments where, in an expression, a look, a gesture, a silence, he knew like no one else how to capture life and create emotion. “This applies perfectly to the writer. Family, couples, nostalgia, childhood friends to whom one no longer has anything to say, the muffled languor of old houses: we have been able to read this in Palace Foam (Nimier Prize 2000), August 15th or Near the body.
More Hunting table tackles more poisonous terrain and revisits in its own way the codes of ancient tragedy. The sunny landscapes of a Normandy holiday are followed by a tense, teeming, nocturnal Paris. There, secrets explode like cluster bombs, the truth becomes as destructive as the lies. However, Guillon does not sacrifice grandiloquent effects. His novel is a precision mechanism that advances step by step. The cracks glimpsed become gaping. From the most luminous Sautet, we move on to the darkest of Chabrol’s films. Right up to the finale that leaves you speechless.
Christian Authier
> A book for the weekend
Hunting tableHéloïse d’Ormesson editions
