Unhappy Goncourt finalist, Sandrine Collette does not leave the literary prize season empty-handed. The 2024 Goncourt prize for high school students was awarded on Thursday November 28 to his novel Madelaine before dawn (JC Lattès, 250 pages, 20.90 euros), a dark, singular and powerful story about the strength of a little girl to live, announced from Rennes the jury representing around fifty high schools from across France.
“What an adventure!” It must be one of the rare times when words fail me, I think my heart is beating a little too fast, it doesn’t reflect my joy, otherwise I would be jumping around saying a lot of bad words, I’m going to avoid it. .. Thank you very much! »immediately reacted the author, contacted by telephone by the jury.
It is a writer coming from “black” who is thus crowned. Born in 1970, Sandrine Collette waited until she was 40 to write her first novel. Knots of steelwith its two horrifying madmen characters who lock the protagonist in a cellar to make him their slave, was published by Denoël in its noir collection, “Cold Sweats” and won the Grand Prix for detective literature 2013. His following books , A wind of ashes, Six white ants et The dust remains (Denoël, 2014, 2015 and 2016) make her a figure in the French thriller. His transfer to JC Lattès for And always the Forestsin 2020 (Grand Prix RTL-Lire), materializes her transition from black to more or less dark gray, and removes her label as a thriller author.
“Hunger Girl”
Madelaine before dawn is his eleventh novel. It draws its strength in part from the very harsh universe which is so well depicted there. A tiny French village, isolated, near a forest worthy of stories that make children shudder. Some families face a series of calamities there: excessively cold winters, famine, and the harshness of the son of neighboring lords, always ready to rape the women passing within his reach. In this fragile community trying to survive, the appearance of Madelaine, a little “hungry girl”wild and fearless, turns everything upside down.
Added to this very harsh framework are a handful of singular characters, as well as a subtle construction which provides suspense and dramatic twists – two thirds of the way through the story emerges a surprise so spectacular that as soon as the book is finished, we reread it, to spot the clues that had escaped us. The story benefits above all from writing that is alternately dark and luminous, with a rough beauty, with its sometimes old words, its jerks and its sentences which stop prematurely.
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