Between the sensual writing of Audrée Wilhelmy, Anna Funder who rehabilitates Madame Orwell, and the apocalypse announced by Stephen Markley, there is something to go through all the feelings.
1. The Flood
A dizzying, maddening and realistic choral novel around collapse and climate change, The Flood by Stephen Markley tells nothing less than the world of today and that of tomorrow.
“Between the prophetic A sky so blue by TC Boyle, a west coast in flames and a Florida under water, or the remarkable Hut by Abel Quentin, who takes the 1972 Meadows report as a starting point, climate change has never been so much a part of fiction as in the last ten months. It is little to say that the fresco by the American Stephen Markley, author of the memorable Ohio (2020), everyone agrees. Ten years of writingan attempt to deliver to its publisher a version of more than 2,000 pages -in fine, The Flood in fact a little more than half -, a documentation work rigorous and mind-blowing with scientific arguments and predictions for a reading, certainly frightening, which owes as much to the social novel as to the noir novel because what the author brushes and describes puts us face to face with what we are already experiencing. No offense to climate skeptics and to conspiracy theorists, recent natural disasters like the one that has just ravaged Valencia and its region are the consequences of global warming. Period. »
Read also | Find the full review here.
2. L’Invisible Madame Orwell
Behind every great man there is a woman, says popular wisdom. Behind George Orwell too, according to Anna Funder.
” With L’Invisible Madame OrwellAnna Funder strives to highlight the way in which not only George Orwell was supported, nourished, inspired, motivatedenriched both intellectually and materially by his wife Eileen O’Shaughnessybut also how the latter has been constantly made invisible. “ How do you make a woman disappear? »she asks herself, as one would ask how to make a body disappear. »
Read also | Find the full review here.
3. Bloodskin
We enter with strength, form and viscera into Audrée Wilhelmy’s new book (Bloods, White Resin).
“Between the western (and as many archetypal statuses that we would find in the West: doctor, notary, mayor or even orphan) and the dark tale (as in Angela Carter, impossible to prevent the wolves from prowling but Bloodskin finds her autonomy and her ascendancy also through the body), Audrée Wilhelmy shapes an unforgettable character. His tongue becomes an echo chamber here moving and poetic (a bit like Lobo Antunes), diffracted through sensations and relationships, and pushes experimentation further. Here is an author whose beautiful wild singularity deserved to find a home that resembles it. »
Read also | Find the full review here.
