And off we go. Between January and February will appear no less than 507 French and foreign novels, an increase in increase compared to the previous year (+5.8%). Among this batch of the literary school year, stars: the Japanese Haruki Murakami, Leïla Slimani Le Goncourt 2016, Pierre Lemaitre winner of the same prize three years earlier, the return of Vanessa Springora five years later Consent… Vanity Fair has also retained other names in a first selection of works published in recent days.
Sophie Blind lives and deadfrom Susan Taubes
The name of Susan Taubes appeared twice in less than a week in the pages of New York Times. The first time was December 2, 1969, in the literary pages, to announce the release of his first novel. Four columns for a not really tender review. The same name made his return on December 9, this time in the pages made and news. We announced the suicide of a woman, found drowned in Long Island, “identified as Ms. Susan Taubes, a teacher and writer of Hungarian origin whose first novel was published last week”.
The author was 41 years old and had suffered from depression for years. But difficult not to make a link between his gesture and the disappointing reception of his work. At the time, the book did not praise any praise. And then a miracle. He was rediscovered. There New York Review of Books republished the book in 2020, which this time received a welcome worthy of the name. The Rivages editions had the great intelligence to publish the book in French, in a translated version and prefaced with brio by Jakuta Alikavazovic.
Reading such a book may seem vertiginous as the story marries that of its author. Sophie Blind, like Susan Taubes, is a Jew of Hungarian origin, granddaughter of Rabbi, daughter of psychoanalyst, a woman who decides to leave her husband-the title, in English is moreover Divorcing. This is perhaps the main theme of the book, separation while mixing many other things: Judéity, the duties that are imposed on a mother, the desire to give in to pleasures, the dream … all this In a multiplicity of forms: jump in the past (the book begins with the death of Sophie Blind), return to Hungarian childhood … A great audacity, too certainly to be noticed in his time. Irony of history: in 2020, the New York Times A new review of this book has dedicated to him. And this time, the paper was complimentary. HW
- Sophie Blind lives and deadfrom Susan Taubes, Rivages editions, 368 pages, 22 euros 50.
Carnesfrom Esther Teillard
First novel alert Uppercut. Open Carnesit is accepting to see the needle of the moral compass and the well-thinking tremble. Barely major, the Marseille narrator arrives in Cergy to integrate the Fine Arts. The varnish of the intelligentsia does nothing: the harshness of the capital replaces the harshness of the Marseille city. In school corridors, “girls speak loudly with weak eyes […] White dyed, black ideas. Then emerged a microcosm of tortured students, disillusioned. The father of all torments? Sex. The genre, the fantasy and the flesh, in subsext. His comrades have the mind trash And bear names with sacred sounds – Hestia, Medea, Eve. She frequented an author, thirty years her elder, obsessed with porn. He mistreats her. The anecdotes on the Parisian bourgeoisie and its flaws are linked. Mirroring, she tells her memories of Marseille, “where women teach you to be disappointed and girls, to enjoy while failing”. Her mother, a prosecutor, voluntarily left the most sordid judicial files to hang out when she was a child. That of this young girl victim of rape in a meeting still haunts her.
There is no story in this shattering novel, if not that of patriarchal violence that infuses everywhere. Female violence too, exposed here without pretense, to discomfort. Esther Teillard summons impertinent, caustic, often sexual images. “It is built up in a scooter to compensate for erection disorders. It is humiliating to be in such a naughty city and not to bandage, ”she says of Marseille. Here it is again, to describe a drawn tattoo “as if a cuttlefish had ejaculated him on his mouth”. The language is raw, incisive, frankly amazing. Each sentence is a punchline. Some obsessions are going through this flood of thoughts cash Like leitmotifs: the shape of the breasts, the essence of punk, the fate of the writer Mireille Havet. The narrator’s emotions transpire little. Apparently passive, it absorbs everything and discharges into literary dazzling. Striking. V. S-U
