With this third opus of his tetralogy devoted to the Thirty Glorious Years, the Goncourt 2013 Pierre Lemaitre points out this paradox of a “radiant future” promised at the dawn of the 1960s, but which, in reality, created the basis for the most great misfortunes of our contemporary world. Highly anticipated, A bright futurepublished by Calmann-Lévy, arrives in bookstores on Tuesday January 21.
After The Big World (2022) et Silence and Anger (2023), we find in this new episode the adventures of the Pelletier family. 1959, Louis, the patriarch, in declining health, repatriated to France after liquidating the soap factory, the family business he had built in Lebanon, is overtaken by his painful memories of the 1914 war.
François is still a journalist. He is considering leaving the newspaper when he is contacted by the secret services to participate in a delicate operation on the other side of the Iron Curtain. We are in the middle of the Cold War, this mission in Prague turns out to be more delicate than expected. Jean, for his part, continues to miss out on his life despite his good ideas about business and his crazy desire to find in his father's eyes the recognition he has always been waiting for. Unfortunately, he has not changed his method of calming his nerves when the cup overflows.
Little Colette, raised for a long time by her grandparents, must return to live under the roof of Jean and Geneviève, a tyrannical wife and toxic mother, where she discovers an unexpected complicity with her little brother Philippe, whom she takes under her wing. The cheerful little girl passionate about the world of bees hides a painful secret that made her grow up faster than expected.
With this new episode, Pierre Lemaitre continues his work of exploring the 20th century. He describes the blessed time of the Trente Glorieuses, which he revisits in the light of our present times. Intensive agriculture with bee-killing pesticides, nuclear risks… This novel with an ironic title examines an era which unconsciously sows the seeds of what has led to climate catastrophe, the exhaustion of resources, and the limits of capitalism , to the death of ideologies.
Besides this historical painting, A bright future is also interested in the intimate. Here is matrimonial love, which we find through two emblematic couples. The longevity of Angèle and Louis' love, which only death could separate. And that of Nine for François, put to the test of doubt by Machiavellian scenarios imagined by unscrupulous French secret services.
The book is also interested in the fraternal bond between Colette and Philippe, two children mistreated by life, who find in this new attachment a comfort and security that adults prove incapable of giving them. This aspect is undoubtedly the most touching of the book, in which we see the emergence of a character full of promise, of future revolts, against male domination and sexual violence. Little Colette, her resistance and her revolt foreshadow the struggles of feminism and the revolution to come…
As usual, Pierre Lemaitre has fun with genres. Here he experiments with undisguised jubilation the art of the spy novel, which he mixes with the family saga and the social chronicle. The result of always meticulous documentation work, and a keen sense of situations, characters, and action, the novel paints the spirit and truth of an era with striking vivacity.
-“It is the whole art of the novelist to construct a very complex mechanism, a watchmaker's mechanism, with lots of cogs which must turn in the right direction, with articulations, with systems of causes and consequences, and of to make this complicated mechanic, when you put it to your reader's ear, make a gentle ticking sound.” explained Pierre Lemaitre to franceinfo Culture in an interview in 2022 on the occasion of the release of his novel The Big World.
“As a novelist, I remain faithful to my pleasure as a reader: what matters to me is to believe in it”, laughs Pierre Lemaitre in the presentation of the novel, for which he chose to highlight this quote from Victor Hugo, “The reader will encounter two or three implausible circumstances which we maintain out of respect for the truth.” A sentence which well sums up the ambition of this novelist keen to bring to light a form of truth in “the illusion of romance”.
A bright futurePierre Lemaitre (Calmann-Lévy, 585 pages, 23.90 euros)
Extract :
— We need you to go on a trip for a few days on behalf of French counter-espionage.
Georges reached out his hand and slowly closed François' notebook, who, stunned by the request, did not show the slightest resistance.
— There is a person in Czechoslovakia who has rendered great services to France and whom we must get out.
Urgently.
— Who is it?
Georges Chastenet appreciated the journalist's reflex.
– We call him Leprechaun.
