A little gem of a chronicle…
In the imaginary village of Campagnol, somewhere in the deep South-West, we meet a beautiful array of colorful characters like Bernard, the former monk who healed by the imposition of hands and his housekeeper Suzanne, a gifted self-taught pianist wrongly suspected of being a lesbian, the subscriber to “World”, as conformist as he is pretentious, so on the side of the handle that he is sitting on it, Hervé the brilliant programmer, capable of blocking the whole great global bazaar in a few clicks, Gustave the anarchist book seller, Léon the soothsayer-medium who calculates square roots in three seconds and has flashes about the future, Vladimir, the young Ukrainian who arrived in the village at six years old with his mother, Christiane, the psychiatrist, expelled from the hospital for refusing the injection, Maud, the nightclub owner on the Languedoc coast, near the places where the pseudo-elite comes to slump, Francesca, the silent, Baron de Rainart, former special services and regular on boards of directors and “defense” secret cabinets and his nephew Martial, a drunkard polytechnician, all already having their napkin ring in the famous weekly video saga which began on TVL, continued on YouTube and continues despite censorship on Odyssey. “New characters” are added, including a certain Herbert Héry, a former legionnaire, violent, mentally limited, drugged, obsessed with evil and robots, who first for his happiness, then for his final decline, resembles line for line to a very young president who wanted to “piss off the non-vaxxers”. Because this whole story takes place during the grotesque and nevertheless tragic episode of the health crisis…
“Rebarbe à Campagnol” presents itself as a charming, colorful and invigorating village chronicle. The style is so lively, lively and of such quality that the book cannot be read, it can be devoured in a single day! Campagnol is a microcosm teeming with life, which Christian Combaz studies in the manner of a philosophical and moralist ethnologist. He draws from this small world prey to all the madness of our current affairs, a fable, an amusing parable while remaining subdued. This leads him to all kinds of conclusions and lessons on the realities of our country, our world and even on planetary, eschatological and even apocalyptic issues of a completely different scale. Thus he goes from the smallest to the largest and from the particular to the general with remarkable dexterity, clairvoyance and intuition. All the characters in this little world are worth the detour. If Herbert causes more pity than envy, the arriviste Elsa Picq, with teeth scratching the floor, a former bank employee who became in no time a parliamentary attaché and in the process a deputy of the presidential party thanks to the sofa promotion, notes of the most grating and delightful caricature since it is the perfect prototype of perfectly worthless little peronelles, who were propelled to the highest responsibilities by the whim of the republican monarch. The author also speaks of “networks of power based on sexual practices”. In this book, both tragic and optimistic, we read on the back cover, “we are familiar with the legend of Rennes-le-Château, we touch on the theme of the Great Monarch, we evoke Louis XVII. » Quite a program. Regulars of “Vampagnol” will fully appreciate this brilliant and friendly work and others should not miss this little gem of intelligence and humor. Only followers of unique thinking, “subscribers to “World”, will be able to take a detour…
