“Everyone stay calm. ” All right. But in Dimitri Kantcheloff’s new novel, absolutely no one keeps calm. On a hectic and binary rhythm – one episode, one chapter – here is the story of a meeting promised to spark. Or Victor Bromier, a “petty bourgeois” ex-VRP who leaves his wife and child and the umbrella factory for love at first sight, Corine, a beautiful revolutionary, ex-daughter of a good family. “The 305’s car radio was playing ‘Damaged Goods’ by Gang of Four. » “Change will do you good/I always knew it would/Sometimes I think I love you/But I know it’s just desire,” began the British post-punks’ hit .
It is the winter of 1979. Jacques Mesrine is going to die. These are the days of serial robberies. And these Bonnie and Clyde from Lyon are going to taste it. The plot is a bit cliché but that gives all the charm to this story full of references to cinema and French thrillers of the time. And the author knows how to immerse himself in the 1970s, which he did not know. On the one hand, it is Giscard, Chirac, Barre, Poniatowski. On the other, Marx, Bakunin, Reclus, Proudhon. On the turntable, there is Michel Sardou – “They have the oil… but that’s all”, “Breakfast in America” by Supertramp, “Three Imaginary Boys” by The Cure…
“General savagery”
In this wild and tender comedy, the “bracos” come one after the other. A police officer tells the woman passing incognito: “Well, this country has gone crazy, mademoiselle. It’s general savagery. Not a day goes by without hearing about a heist, an attack or a kidnapping… Never seen so much violence. If this continues, this story will end in civil war. » As in his previous and first novel “Life and Death of Vernon Sullivan”, Dimitri Kantcheloff digs into the furrow of pastiche. It’s effective.
“Everyone keep calm”, by Dimitri Kantcheloff, ed. Finitude, 192. p., 18 €, ebook 11,99 €.
