For his third book, Dimitri Kantcheloff takes us on an incredible journey of an atypical couple, living at 100 miles an hour, with Everyone stay calm (Finitude editions), a mischievous, mischievous novel, full of humor. Its main character, Victor Bromier, loses his job and his illusions. He walks with a determined step even if he has no destination. And when he finds himself on the banks of the Saône, he hopes that a wave will come and take him away. “He couldn’t bring himself to jump. Nor did he contemplate hanging or poisoning. Was it pride, or some form of cowardice, a strange force kept him from ending his life.”
Victor Bromier is the typical profile of winnera commercial executive earning a good living, with wife and child, and a house on credit in the Lyon suburbs. Everything collapsed on a winter day in 1979. His boss deemed it urgent and useful to do without his services.
The ex-VRP faces an existential question: what will become of him? To think: a few whiskeys, nothing beats Jack’s company, Jack Daniel’s. Tell the truth to Monique, his wife, lie to her again and again or completely disappear from his life without a word or explanation? Victor Bromier, helpless, drowns himself in alcohol in a bistro. Then, Corine enters the tobacco bar, and forever shakes up the life of the petty bourgeoisie.
Corine is beautiful, punk, revolutionary and bank robber. Corine is authentic. Upon contact with him, Victor observes that he has always lived a lie. And he strips himself naked in front of the passionaria. No more showing off, make way for sincerity. “He understood at that moment that he had finished with the imposture. To Corine, he would only owe the strictest truth, as if to make up for the lies he had accumulated with the others.” So, Victor also becomes a revolutionary and a robber. And in love. And – above all – alive. Even if to spend a night with Corine, he had to obey her and read in one go The Society of the Show by Guy Debord.
With a nervous style, Dimitri Kantcheloff, already noticed with his second novel Life and death of Vernon Sullivan (Finitude, 2023), brings to life an era that those under 40 cannot experience. His thanks at the end of the book are a tribute to artists who left their mark on him, from Michel Audiard to Henri Verneuil, including Jean-Pierre Marielle and Mireille Darc. With his cinematographic writing, he makes Corine and Victor’s escape more alive, more tangible. Everyone stay calm can be read with a smile on your face throughout the 185 pages of the book.
“Everyone keep calm”, Dimitri Kantcheloff, Finitude editions, 18 euros
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