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The nape of Deborah Kerr’s neck, a brilliant architect, spun stockings, the company of Mephistopheles and ecological “ancient wisdoms”.
Romans
Jean-Pierre Montal, to North Face
Séguier, 154 pp., €19 (ebook: €12.99).
His name is Pierre, he has an important position in a company where he deals in contracts. Her name is Florence, she taught history, has a French mother and an English father. They meet at the exit ofShe and him by Leo McCarey, in the Latin Quarter, once and then twice. Which version do they prefer? The first, the one from 1939 with Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer? Or the one from 1957, where “Cary Grant leans down to kiss Deborah Kerr’s neck” ? Except that this plan doesn’t exist. He dreamed it. He’s going to live it by kissing Florence’s neck, “That neck didn’t look its age”. Pierre is 48 years old, Florence 72. And Pierre asks a friend: “Do you find it ridiculous? A little sad even?” “I think you’re just looking for difficulty. It’s already complicated enough as it is, and you choose to attack from the north face.” This love story, the outcome of which is her responsibility, reminds Florence of what she experienced in 1974, at the age of 23, in Austria, in love with a Viennese intellectual born in 1911. The novel resembles the character of Pierre, fatalistic, seeking elegance. The leitmotif is a line from the film: “It’s funny, the things we like the most are illegal, immoral or fattening.” Cl.D.
Antoine Choplin, Masao’s Boat
Buchet-Chastel, 208 pp., 19,50 € (ebook : 13,99 €).
A woman returns to a man, her father. They are father and daughter, and have not seen each other for fourteen years. He is a worker on the Japanese island of Naoshima. Their reunion takes place with a gentleness that Western texts have