Lisbeth Koutchoumoff Arman
Published on October 1, 2024 at 9:03 p.m. / Modified on October 1, 2024 at 9:04 p.m.
Grégoire Bouillier has lived in Paris since childhood. However, he had never set foot in the Musée de l’Orangerie, nor had he ever seen the Water lilies by Claude Monet which are there. Now the writer goes there and feels something strange: “I was overcome with dizziness and anxiety. I felt terribly oppressed. It was immediate. I barely felt unwell.” Quite the opposite of the emotions generally associated with the “Sixtine of Impressionism”. Instead of a floral and aquatic enchantment, Grégoire Bouillier sees “stagnant water”, “nympheas metastasizing endlessly, a continuum of colors more dull than bright rising like a wall of vegetalized water.
Grégoire Bouillier then throws himself headlong into an investigation of which he has the secret, total, obsessive, to understand what he calls his “Orangerie syndrome”. For the occasion, he uses the narrative device created in his previous novel, The heart does not give in: the comical and irresistible duo from the Bmore & Investigations pharmacy, namely detective Bmore (Grégoire Bouillier himself) and his assistant Penny, who speaks about herself in the third person. Because, looking closely, by “zooming in fully” on the eight panels of the Water lilies, Bmore-Grégoire Bouillier is convinced of this: “A corpse floats somewhere in the water lily pond, death, sorrow and suffering haunt this painting […] Monet buried something or someone in his Water lilies.»
Want to read all of our articles?
For CHF 29.- per month, enjoy unlimited access to our articles, without obligation!
I subscribe
Good reasons to subscribe to Le Temps:
- Unlimited access to all content available on the website.
- Unlimited access to all content available on the mobile application
- Sharing plan of 5 articles per month
- Consultation of the digital version of the newspaper from 10 p.m. the day before
- Access to supplements and T, the Temps magazine, in e-paper format
- Access to a set of exclusive benefits reserved for subscribers
Already a subscriber?
Log in
