It was time to celebrate, it is now time to take stock. Giving in to the traditional retrospective, the editorial journalists answered this terrible question: if there were only one left, what would be your reading of the year? Discover the editorial staff’s favorites, without looking at the calendar or current events.
The choice of Hocine Bouhadjera
Taxi Girl wasn’t just another band at the heart of thea new wave from the early post-punk years; it was a tumultuous echo of Rimbaud and Burroughs. Mirwais Ahmadzai, the band’s guitarist, portrayed in Taxi-Girl – 1978-1981 (Editions Séguier), these years of vibrant chaos, marked by the rise of what he proclaimed “ the best band in the world “. And against all odds, he’s not wrong…
CHRONICLE – Why Taxi Girl is the most romantic French group
Through a fragmented, slang story, sometimes experimentally written, the musician-writer recounts a sublime bankruptcy, a heroic disillusionment and an antediluvian era. But how did Taxi Girl prove to be different from other punk groups of the time, and even in success, from the outsiders?
The tragedy of its trajectory, the personality of each of its members, especially its singer, who ostensibly showed that he was a true…
The choice of Antoine Oury
The reopening of Notre-Dame should have brought to light this text readable for the first time in French thanks to the much too little-known editions of Typhoon. Published in 1991, Muncastera short novel by the British Robert Westall, translated by Benjamin Kuntzer, evokes the very particular project undertaken by an experienced rope access technician: renovating a cathedral.
Nothing will go as planned, obviously: Muncaster is a diabolically mastered construction in which nothing is missing. Neither mystery, nor suspense, nor cold and insidious horror. A discovery that makes you want to dive straight into the rest of Westall’s work: quickly, other translations!
The choice of Nicolas Gary
Vampires exert this indescribable fascination in that as dead creatures, they move among the living – and in this way, fall into the Undead category. But their subsistence passes through this duality of the monster which feeds on humans, on a vanished humanity.
Arnaud Esquerre thus explores the evolution of the concept of “ vampire » since its appearance in Europe in the 18th century in his essay This is how vampires move(Fayard, 2022). Questioning death and immortality, sexuality as well as desire, interdependence – whether exploitation, parasitism or even symbiotic? — the vampire is this dark side which sends us back to religious decline, therefore the ostracization of the foreigner.
MICHRONIC – This is how vampires move. Essay on the variation of meaning
Whether literary creatures, bats, medical metaphors or socio-economic or sexual symbols (in Marx and Freud, but is it surprising?), the vampire lives in us, just waiting to be revealed…
The choice of Clotilde Martin
Varying genres means varying pleasures: Clotilde Martin selects Fluide Glacial – 50 years of coversdirected by Jean-Christophe Delpierre, former editor-in-chief of the famous magazine “ Umour and Comics».
CHRONICLE – Gotlib, Edika, Sattouf… 50 years of Fluide Glacial
A work – or rather a colossal work of visual archiving – which invites us to delve back into the history of the newspaper. For some, this anniversary work will have the scent of memories of bygone adolescence, for others, it will be a surprising discovery…
Blutch, Riad Sattouf, Coyote, Edika, Gotlib…: many have shaped the DNA of Fluide Glacial.
The choice of Louella Boulland
Halfway between the dark tale and the poetic novel, Audrée Wilhelmy gave life to a literary UFO: Bloodskin published by Le Tripode. The author takes us to the heart of the forests of Kangoq, from which we never fully emerge, where a strange creature lives.
Isolated in her feather room, a woman, by turns a witch, lover or teacher, fascinates with her unique practice of feathering geese. There, in the middle of her shop, she offers her body to men, and devotes the rest of her time to passing on her knowledge to women.
CHRONICLE – Peau-de-sang, between dark tale and poetic novel
With this novel with the overtones of a disturbing tale, Audrée Wilhelmy revisits the story of Donkey skin by Charles Perrault. Incest, sexuality, death… The author tackles delicate subjects, with a poetic force unmatched this year.
Truly feminist, the author manipulates language and plays with the meaning of words: a mental exercise that we enjoy with great pleasure. To read, reread, and reflect, Bloodskinis a literary experience in its own right.
- The choice of Bruno Ménétrier
We like westerns or we don’t, but this book may well make you want something else. With this first novel, the author makes a remarkable entry into the literary world.
Ces Promised Landsare those offarouest those of the gold rush, where magnificent prose will unfold: a powerful and raw language, carnal and suggestive, intense and vibrant. There is blood, mud, vermin, and much worse… because it is the language of a ” dark earth teeming with long ringed worms ».
CHRONICLE – Promised Lands: Human Comedy, in the Wild West
But the text remains totally controlled, all in the service of a solidly constructed story. A choral novel where each chapter allows one of the characters to develop in a temporal spiral mixing past and present. Stories where women are those who do not want to bow to the fury or desire of men.
The choice of Maria Danthine
During the visit to George Sand’s house in Nohant-Vic, our guide mentioned the epistolary book between George Sand and Gustave Flaubert, adding that it is probably one of the most beautiful correspondences in French literature. She was right.
I bought it, read it, tasted it and enjoyed it. Between Croisset Norman and Nohant Berry, postmen carried letters testifying to a strong friendship. George Sand and Gustave Flaubert dipped their pens in ink, and on the hundreds of sheets placed tenderness, respect and mutual admiration, similarly concerned looks at the world.
Between trivialities and daily worries, they shared their feelings and perceptions, complained to each other about their adventures with writing. When they met, apart from discussions about the preparation of roast chicken and jam sandwiches, about theater shows in Nohant and visits to the city of Rouen, for long hours they read and in a friendly way, a benevolent critic commented on the written texts.
In letters they invited each other and something constantly interrupted their plans, but they never got offended. They both knew that writing was more important. George Sand promised Flaubert that when he came to see her in Nohant, she would allow him to stay in his dressing gown and slippers. In the lightness of their exchanges, we perceive a friendship full of wit, intelligence and tenderness.
The choice of Clémence Leboucher
The subject of gynecological violence always proves sensitive and delicate. It is sometimes difficult, for the people concerned, to oppose a figure as imposing as that of the doctor, to insist on pain which may seem insignificant, to refuse methods of contraception presented as obvious.
However, a questioning of the posture of gynecologists seems to be underway, and it is manifested in particular with the sublime work of Martin Winckler, The women’s choir ( P.O.L,2011) adapted into a comic strip by Aude Mermilliod.
Where we learn, by following a medical student who is rather confident in her skills, that no, an IUD does not necessarily have to be changed every five years, that women do not lie when they say they have pain, and that in medicine, and particularly in gynecology, kindness is always the mother of safety.
Mimiche’s choice
My reading favorite for 2024? Polar? Essay ? Novel ? Comics?… It’s the biographical novelFreedwoman of Montmartre,Jean-Paul Delfino (Istya & Cie, 2024) which will remain, for me, the best reading moment and a very nice discovery.
Firstly because, without even being an informed amateur, I like Suzanne Valadon’s painting which reflects her rage to live to paint, her desire to get out of the rut to which the poverty of her childhood promised her.
CHRONICLE – Freedwoman of Montmartre: Suzanne Valadon, woman artist among men
Then because, with a lot of this rage and realism, Jean Paul Delphino takes his reader into the daily life of his heroine as if, from restaurant to restaurant, we were walking with her in the streets of La Butte, with Gazi-le- Tatar, in these years of artistic explosions. To the point of having thought, for a moment, that I was reading an autobiography rather than a novel! Too strong!
The choice of Nicolas Ancion
2024 will have been a very rich year for comics. But if I had to choose just one title, I immediately think ofLootingby Maxime de Lisle and Renan Coquin (Delcourt), because this album manages to make concrete, shocking and moving the terrible reality of overfishing in West Africa.
CHRONICLE – Looting: overfishing, bullies and hoodlums
To embrace this complex subject, the screenwriter invites us to follow several fictional, but hyper-documented threads, which make us experience from the inside the tensions, contradictions and aberrations of which our industrial and consumerist world is woven. An exceptional book.
Image credits: ActuaLitté / CC-By-SA 2.0
By Louella Boulland
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