“This book must end as a detective novel ends: with the truth. Because the truth exists, whatever the heralds of nuance, the champions of ambivalence, the proponents of universal fiction. At a moment, in the field of life, something is true or false, fact or fable. It may not last, but it’s a moment of truth […] A novel must not sacrifice the truth, it would lose its reason for being, which consists of risking it, whatever it may be. If you don’t write to seek it, don’t write. »
For more than thirty years this imperative demand for truth has been at the heart of the work of Camille Laurens, considered among a few others (Ernaux or Angot, to name but a few), as one of the great priestesses communing with the cult autofiction. In his case, however, the things of life and writing mixed together are undoubtedly more complicated than that. And the spirit of the system is constantly corroded by a sort of jubilation in erasing the lines which, too, is properly romantic.
The shadow of a suspicion
So with this “Your promise”, his new novel, already unanimously considered one of the great books of the beginning of the year. Laurens plays virtuoso with appearances, of reality or of what is supposed to be. So let’s be Claire Lancel (same initials as her author…), a novelist with a well-established reputation, a middle-aged woman, in her forties or perhaps already in her fifties, it doesn’t matter. His work bears witness to the tragedies (the loss of a child), the troubles (an atrociously conflictual divorce), a turbulent love life, and his life. Because if there is one thing that Claire has never given up, it is love, it is desire, sex as a reparation.
That’s “Your promise”, a dizzying and cruel summary of the decomposition of amorous discourse
So, when she meets Gilles Fabian, theater director and puppeteer, she becomes convinced that once again, passion is knocking at the door. Gilles responds to all his aspirations, even the most secret. But little by little, over the years, the shadow of a suspicion, an unease, creeps in between them. Until the gradual revelation of her lover’s “forfeiture”, of his lies, of his betrayal, which forces Claire not to keep the promise she had made to him in the early days of their love to never write about him .
Gallimard
Gorgeous
That’s “Your Promise”, a dizzying and cruel summary of the decomposition of amorous discourse. If we cannot help but note here and there the correspondences with the life of Camille Laurens (or what we think we know about it), it would be in vain to see it as just another self-fictional exercise.
In this love story which cannot be fully recognized as such, the novelist sometimes has grandiose accents which bring her closer to a Duras than to anyone else. She writes “there is no one and it’s you”. That’s exactly it and it’s magnificent.
“Your promise”, by Camille Laurens, ed. Gallimard, 368 p., €22.50, ebook €14.99.
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