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An orphan in a “convict uniform”, a father walking on eggshells with his daughter, the taste of nescafé, daisies rolling down the slopes and cocaine-addicted thugs.
Romans
Jean Meckert, the Butcher of the Hurlus
Illustrations of Saint Molotov. Ronces éditions, 224 pp., €20.
Rue de Bagnolet, little Lhozier lives with his mother, a war widow, but not a worthy widow. Her husband was shot in 1917 for mutiny in Perthes-les-Hurlus, in the Marne, which means that it was a “Bolshevik”. Ms. Lhozier is persecuted by the neighborhood: “Nothing like the wives of heroes to sweat revenge”. She's the one we end up arresting for disturbing public order. His mother locked up he knows not where, little Michou is sent to the orphanage, and falls into another world. “It was like a definitive option, skull at zero, jail uniform, end of childhood at eight and a half years old […].» Protected by an older godfather, in a certificate class, little Michou becomes the inspiration for a fantastic journey which leads to the East via the station of the same name. There are four of them escaping, dressed “on Sunday”, the head passed with iodine yellow as a vaccine against the Spanish flu, the beret on top. Objective: to take on the role of General Des Gringues, the person responsible for the assassination of Michou's father, “the butcher of the Hurlus”. Breaking a portrait with a hatpin is only a symbolic murder, but the fine team will indeed avenge the Lhozier family. An afterword by Stéphanie Delestré and Hervé Delouche sheds light on what is autobiographical in this novel published in 1982 in the Série noire. Cl.D.
Rosanna Lerner, Pussy suicide
Grasset, 224 pp., 19 € (ebook: 14 €).
Ottessa is preparing to take the baccalaureate. She has no mother but she has a father, overtaken by
France
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