With “Les Ames Fierce”, the French author takes us into a small, frighteningly banal American town where she plays joyfully with the codes of soap operas and dark cinema.
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By borrowing the pseudonym “Arthur Vingtras” from the journalist-writer Caroline Rémy (also known as Séverine), who herself had chosen it in homage to the hero of Jules Vallès (Jacques Vingtras), Marie Vingtras shows that she likes to play with literary codes and put them into perspective. When she published her first novel in 2021, Blizzard (the Olive Tree), which is set in Alaska, it draws heavily on the references of Nordic thrillers and the Coen brothers’ cinema: snow, fog, missing child, paternal quest… among others. Same again today with The Fierce Soulsin the heart of the most ordinary America there is. We are in Mercy, a town of a few thousand inhabitants where nothing happens. Until the day Leo, a teenager known to all, is discovered with her nose in the river and her irises wild. The sheriff, Lauren Hobler, crouches down, clears her hair and the quiet town is transformed into a crime scene.
From this moment on, it takes off quickly and strongly with archetypal heroes who will each express themselves in turn. First the lesbian sheriff, Lauren Hobler, not appreciated by her low-brow deputies. Then Benjamin, a former successful writer and literature teacher eaten up by his secrets and his time in prison. Then comes Leo’s former best friend without forgetting the father of the young dead girl. Four seasons, like in TV series. Four chapters carried by different writings like a romantic treasure hunt. But above all the portrait of an American city frighteningly banal and populated by little people without qualities. It reeks of lies, social injustice and above all the pleasure of the novelist in playing with the codes of the soap opera and black cinema. Marie Vingtras assumes all this with pleasure and takes us into her stylistic exercises where we check the same reference boxes. But it would be unfair to stop there, because the author has a writing style that makes one rejoice, the gift of contrast and surprise when, suddenly, we feel, like the characters in the novel, the ground giving way beneath our feet. We are moved, Marie Vingtras has won.
The Fierce Souls, Marie Vingtras, Olivier editions, 270pp, €21.50
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