100% books: Favorites from Librairie Le Neuf in Saint-dié-des-Vosges

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ROMANS

EMMANUEL RUBEN/ Malville

Éditions Stock – August 2024 – 265 pages – €20.90

2036, France is governed by the extreme right, Samuel lives recluse in his cellar, since the explosion of the Malville nuclear power plant, where he lived as a child, “the navel of the world”, where his father worked. We are in the 80s, the power plant crystallizes family tensions, political struggles are at the top of the poster (Larzac, Creys Malville, Fessenheim…). Samuel becomes friends with Thomas, a slightly wild boy, and Astrid, a rebellious young girl who fuels desire. A novel of learning and anticipation, Malville explores this peri-urban France, as well as the health and environmental consequences of our energy “choices” which irremediably disrupt our relationship to the world, to the earth and to living things. Emmanuel Ruben, geographer joins Eric Fottorino, Mohican, and Serge Joncourt, Human Nature, in this environmental approach anchored in the contemporary novel. This book is beneficial and challenges certain preconceived ideas.

Olivier's favorite

PRUNE ANTOINE / The evil mother

Éditions Denoël – September 2024
260 pages – 20€

Poignant, hard-hitting and courageous story about a young woman, mother of six children, who kills five of them during Covid. She will be sentenced to life imprisonment. We can say to ourselves that everything could have been different, without her husband, missing the point, without her father… This young woman missed out on her life. Prune Antoine, took over the investigation meticulously, met Christiane K. in prison, reread the documents in the file, without overwhelming, tries to understand without blaming… The young journalist – author a few years ago of a sparkling novel L summer time goes straight to the heart – does it in an elegant way, as she feels concerned about her own role as a mother and questions her own motherhood. She questions us all about our human condition, about the way we look at women, mothers and fathers too. Difficult to say more, but you have to read it.

Olivier's favorite

GWEN GUILYN / The weird house

Éditions du Panseur – Oct. 2024

200 pages – 19 €

For the first time, a book awakens things in me that are unclear, undigested, and it's really complicated to manage, to explain: the book really scares me. Not by its fantastic, gothic, abstract dimension, perhaps a little by its singular, oppressive and suffocating language, certainly by its terrifying realism, its way of expressing humanity, of expressing my fears… The book excites me! And more than anything, the fear of never finding someone that this novel would touch me as much, the feeling of being terribly alone, the feeling of being flattened… The idea that this book might not touch everyone makes me very unhappy…

Martin's favorite

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