Philippe Jaenada and Pauline Clavière: literary archeology of a mystery

Intervention by Katia Courteau, from the Bookstore Port de Têtein Montreal

“It’s a family archeology, a personal geography”

Intervention by Sandrine Babu, from the L’Instant Bookstore in the 15th in Paris

Presentation of Lilia Hassaine:

Welcome to “ETCETERA!” »

In the summary this week, a bristromancier. Definition: novelist who loves bistros. Philippe Jaenada is with us, and I tease him… because he is much more than that! A bit of an investigator, a bit of a journalist, a bit of a historian, he digs through the archives, goes through the newspapers, examines the photographs, and the result is precise, fascinating novels each time. Femina Prize for La Serpe in 2017, he returns this fall with Casualness is a beautiful thinge a novel not at all casual, which appeared in the first selections of Goncourt. The starting point of the book is a true story: that of a very beautiful young woman who – at the age of 20 – threw herself out of the window of a Parisian building. It was in 1953. 70 years later, Philippe Jaenada tries to trace him to understand what happened to him.

We will also delve with him into one of his favorite books… since each week we propose to introduce you to a great classic of literature. This week: Boris Vian, The Foam of Days… novel written in three months by its author, in 1947. It is above all ONE OF Philippe Jaenada'S FIRST LITERARY SHOCKS, when he was a teenager.

I will also have the pleasure of welcoming the novelist Pauline Clavière who, like him, is fond of literary investigations… and who, like Boris Vian, has a taste for the marvelous. In Wonderlandher third novel, she seeks to solve a mystery… the story of two German women who arrive in 1977 in a very small village in Cantal. So what did they come to do here? The fantasy machine revs up, and the novel can begin.

We will finally meet our French-speaking booksellers for their questions and favorites, throughout the show.

You're listening to ETCETERA, let's go!

Classic Book Sequence: The Foam of DaysBoris Vian, chapter 33 – 1947

Chloé's hand, warm and confident, was in Colin's hand. She looked at him, her light, slightly surprised eyes held him at rest. At the bottom of the platform, in the room, there were worries piling up, eager to suffocate each other. Chloé felt an opaque force in her body, in her thorax, an opposing presence, she did not know how to fight, she coughed from time to time to move the adversary, clinging to her deep flesh. At her side, Colin, his back slightly bent, looked at her. Night was coming, forming in concentric layers around the small luminous core of the lamp lit at the bedside, taken from the wall, enclosed by a round plate of frosted crystal.

– Play me some music, Colin, said Chloé.

Booksellers’ Favorites Sequence:

Musical programming:

• Enchanted JuliaMoussa
• Les Paradis feetChristophe
• Atari, Yvniss