The partridge’s eye
by Christian Astolfi
Ed. The Noise of the World, 240 p. ; €21.
Rose, married at 16, left her native Corsica to move to Toulon (Var), with her husband, a former taciturn shepherd who became a milling worker at the Arsenal.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Toulon also employed Algerians, Moroccans, Portuguese… housed in a large shantytown. The populations only cross paths until the day Rose is injured, and Farida the Algerian treats her.
Between the two women with constrained, tiny lives, a faithful friendship is formed, woven from more or less determined meetings, from expectations, from confidences about their lives, their children, from mint teas and honey cakes.
Between them, they breathe. Farida invites Rose to a literacy class, Rose is interested in history in progress, on October 17, 1961 when, in Paris, Algerians were thrown into the Seine.
And throughout this delicate novel, Christian Astolfi, winner of the France Bleu-Page booksellers prize for Of our world taken away in 2022, initiates a gentle movement of emancipation, of dignity in the hearts of these women and ours.
Our opinion: PPP
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