Love makes you blind. And a little naive in the case of the narrator of this novel by Camille Laurens. Until the great promises of the beginning are shattered with losses and clashes.
Claire Lancel, the main character of this novel by Camille Laurens, is her fictional double. Autofiction exactly. There is a bit of his life. And totally imaginary chunks. This novelist has always woven her literary work around her own existence. We can therefore read this book while trying to disentangle the true from the false. But the best thing is to immerse yourself in it by convincing yourself that nothing is true, that life cannot be as strong, powerful and devastating as this story of love, of love at first sight, which ends badly.
Claire Lancel, recognized novelist, living from her pen, is sad. Alone, fifty years old. When she agrees to go, at the insistence of her best friend, to a party on December 31, she has no idea that she will find the director Gilles Fabian there. A handsome man, attentive, intelligent. She will seduce him (or the opposite…) and then begins a cloudless romance. The worst that can happen to him because “ we don’t write about happiness. The only subject of literature is sorrow. Or passion, which amounts to the same thing after a while. »
Built like a thriller which slowly reveals the horror of the situation (police, lawyers, prison, trial), Your Promise crescendoes in the tension between these two that everything attracts. Claire is in love. Gilles is happy with her. But what hides this beautiful harmony, this dolce vita on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, in the shade of a flowering mimosa?
The novelist will ultimately discover herself in the worst role, that of the manipulated, deceived, abused woman. Until the appearance of violence, of blood… A paradox that she tries to understand: “ When it destroys, it still desires. By taking revenge, she continues to love. » A beautiful love, a tragic ending, a strong and gripping novel.
“Your promise”, Camille Laurens, Gallimard, 364 pages, €22.50
