The return of Vanessa Springora after “Le Consentement”, one of the literary shocks of the start of 2025, the feminist horror phenomenon from Spain or even the new Lola Lafon… Here are the 8 books that will accompany our start of the year.
1. Surname by Vanessa Springora
Vanessa Springora’s first book, Consent, was such a shock, such an event, such a dazzling text that we wondered if it would be followed by others. After this definitive text, in which direction could it choose to go? Exactly five years later, she returns with Surname, a book which could surprise us – it plunges us into the Second World War – but which indicates a real coherence in Springora’s literary approach.
Read the article by Nelly Kaprièlian
Surname by Vanessa Springora (Grasset), 400 p., 22 €. In bookstores January 2.
2. Hospitality to the demon by Constantin Alexandrakis
Hospitality to the demon, second story by Constantin Alexandrakis after Twice born (Verticales 2017) is one of the literary shocks of the beginning of the year 2025. A father, named “The Father” who shortly after the birth of his daughter is invaded by memories of a sexual assault that he suffered in his childhood and who fears reproducing it. This is one of the first times, to our knowledge, that a man has spoken about the ravages of child crime and in doing so, tells his story. As in sad tiger by Neige Sinno who prefaces Hospitality to the demonthe fictionalized testimony, between humor and “gothic” nightmare, takes on a literary scope which enhances it
Meeting with Constantin Alexandrakis, sensation of the 2025 literary season
Hospitality to the demon by Constantin Alexandrakis (Verticals), 240 p., €20. In bookstores January 9.
3. It was never too late by Lola Lafon
“How disturbing it is, this era in which we should panic about everything, but worry about nothing”, writes Lola Lafon in what is neither a logbook, nor a diary, nor even a notebook, but a bit of all of that at the same time. Let’s say that Lola Lafon invents an unclassifiable genre to take the pulse of an era. What do our feelings say about it, how can we express, think, transmit, what it is like to be immersed in the political and ideological bath of today, in the life of now? How can we grasp the consequences of our confrontation with reality?
Read the article by Nelly Kaprièlian
It was never too late of Lola Lafon (Stock), 150 p., 18.50 €. In bookstores January 8.
4. The Figure by Bertrand Belin
What is striking, when we delve into this new text by Bertand Belin, is his angry sentence. A striking torrent of words shakes up everything in its path and little by little gives a glimpse of what is at the origin of this book, and undoubtedly of all his work: the dismay of a little boy faced with his father’s outbursts of violence. . Because the author offers us here a survival manual in hostile territory. “I learned the hard way, the slightest sound of nothing at all, like breathing heard through a door, can drive the head of a family crazy with rage to the point that he grabs you and throws you against the walls like a wet cloth.”
Read the article by Sylvie Tanette
The Figure by Bertrand Belin (POL), 280 p., 19 €. In bookstores January 2.
5. The Untamed Lands Lauren Groff
The moon is hidden by clouds and a young girl wearing a hood and wearing a pair of sturdy boots is running away. She talks to herself and gives herself courage. It is with this painting, which seems straight out of a fairy tale, that the American author Lauren Groff opens The Untamed Lands, novel in which she tackles the genre of historical fiction for the second time.
Read Pauline Le Gall’s review
The Untamed Lands by Lauren Groff (Éditions de l’Olivier/“Foreign Literature”), translation from English (United States) by Carine Chichereau, 272 p., 23.5 €. In bookstores January 3.
6. A magnificent loser by Florence Seyvos
From ApparitionsPrix Goncourt for the first novel in 1995, Florence Seyvos knows how to portray the uneasiness, the troubled situations, the distress of childhood and adolescence. Here, Anna lives in diffuse and permanent insecurity, is often more lucid than her mother but depends on adults and what they impose. She finds herself drawn into a complex daily life, marked by the unpredictability of her father-in-law.
Read Sylvie Tanette’s review
A magnificent loser by Florence Seyvos, (Éditions de l’Olivier), 144 p., €19.50.
7. Thousands of circles in the water of course
For years, alongside translations of American authors, Claro has carried out a unique writing work where he shares his literary passions, his dismay, the history of his family, like so many linked pieces of his life. between them. So with this new text, neither autobiography nor essay, but rather a journey inside his writer’s brain. “Because to the materials of the past which remain in me I have nothing other to offer than violent but necessary treatments, I am forced to persist on increasingly strange expanses of paper.”
Read the article by Sylvie Tanette
Thousands of circles in the water of Claro (Actes Sud), 176 p., 19 €. In bookstores January 2.
8. Woodworm by Layla Martínez
In this disturbing first novel, Layla Martínez alternates the interior monologues of these two characters and traces the story of four generations of women, and the rich and abusive family for whom they have in turn worked. What begins as a variation on the haunted house theme quickly mutates into an angry feminist novel about a country’s traumas – the rich willingly dine with Franco – and the social inequalities that continue to thrive in a capitalist Europe .
Woodworm by Layla Martínez (Seuil/“Cadre vert”), translated from Spanish by Isabelle Gugnon, 160 p., 18.50 €. In bookstores January 3.
