I asked myself when I started reading the fierce souls by Marie Vingtras why this French writer (who won the 2022 booksellers’ prize with Blizzard her first novel and the Fnac novel prize 2024 with this one) had chosen to camp his intrigue in America deep, in a small town of 3974 inhabitants, Mercy.
Perhaps she dreamed that a female sheriff character would be born from her pen and obviously for that she had to be in America. Perhaps she wanted to show us that Lauren, Seth, Benjamin, Emmy and Léo perhaps lived thousands of kilometers from us, readers, but that they shared the same questions, the same desires and disillusionments, the same feelings.
What are fierce souls about?
Mercy has everything of a quiet town, without history where everyone knows each other or thinks they know each other.
“I kissed him on the forehead, nothing more in public because there is always someone hidden behind a curtain to spy on this curious couple, the taciturn sheriff and her companion. »
But then the body of a teenage girl is discovered in the river. It is through the voice of Lauren, the town sheriff that this story opens in the spring.
From the start, Marie Vingtras introduces unusual characters like Donegan, the sheriff’s deputy who is physically imposing but very emotional “to the point that his voice was derailing when he spoke” and who often cries.
And from the start, it shows that behind the appearance of a city where nothing is happening, violence, secrets, the desire to flee for other lives are present:
She knew that I loved all of her, the smooth parts and the others so furiously damaged that they looked like crumpled kraft paper.
What I liked
- very cinematic writing
- the construction of the plot in 4 seasons (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter) experienced by 4 different characters. This allows you to have several points of view not only on the story but also on the protagonists, each noticing different details.
- this form of choral novel also allows us to return to moments not previously seen. For example, Lauren missed the interrogation of Professor Benjamin, considered to be the murderer, and when in the second part, he tells the rest of the story, he returns to this moment.
- the tone changes from one part to another, the most striking for me being the second part which sets up a very tense prison atmosphere.
- the investigation is not at the heart of this thriller (even if we want to know how Léo died), The fierce soulsis a portrait of terribly human and imperfect men and women.
“What is this city whose inhabitants hated literature so much? » (Benjamin)
“His (about his mother) lawn is soft green, she made sure the gardener watered it as if his life depended on it, and since he has no papers, in a way, it is the case. » (Emmy)
The fierce soulsMarie Vingtras, Editions de l’Olivier, 267p
Editor; Chocoladdict.
