A cliché of romantic clichés, the father figure nonetheless remains one of the most exciting quests in a writer’s life, because it raises the question of inheritance and transmission, of the scars of the past. , violence and the trauma it can cause. This winter again, she haunts certain great texts of the French literary season and constantly changes her appearance, becoming in turn model and nemesis, ghost and demon, victim and executioner. In literature too, to grow up, you have to kill your father.
Surnameby Vanessa Springora
What to write after this? The question must have haunted Vanessa Springora at the very moment she was putting an end to the Consenta total explosion which made its author the leading figure of literary #MeToo. However, it didn’t take long before she discovered a new breadcrumb trail to pull in a family maze filled with gray areas.
While promoting her book, she learns of the death of her father, an enigmatic, destructive character, from whom she has been estranged for years. Among his belongings, disturbing photos of his Czech grandfather Joseph proudly displaying the Nazi imperial eagle. Legend has it, however, that when he was conscripted by force, he deserted the German army. Had we lied to him? This is the start of an intimate investigation into the trail of this man and a family name that she has always had difficulty understanding. What if this painful secret was the primary reason for his father’s madness?
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Certainly, the book resonates less strongly than Consentbut how could it be otherwise? The fact remains that Vanessa Springora excels at crafting uncompromising autofictional literature. She creates hybrid works where the story of oneself serves as a breeding ground for a multitude of collective and universal questions. By exposing herself, she undresses the entire society. A commitment that makes her a leading intellectual.
Tell you about my sonby Philippe Besson
We remember as if it were yesterday This is not a news itema true and heartbreaking novel in which Philippe Besson recounted, based on a confession made to him, the odious, silenced truth of the children of feminicide. With Tell you about my sontoday he is tackling another great scourge of our time: school bullying. He takes us, on-board camera, into the rubble of a family wiped out by the suicide of a 14-year-old boy who could no longer stand the bullying, persecution and banishment inflicted by some of his comrades. It especially interferes in the head of a father.
As he joins the white march organized in Hugo’s honor with his wife Juliette and his other son Enzo at his side, Vincent remembers the events that led to the tragedy. Between his devouring guilt, him, the protective figure incapable of understanding the signals, his impossible hatred towards those responsible who are still only children and his anger against an educational system with its guilty impotence, the man sinks, consumes itself, but struggles for those who are still here. The reading experience is harsh, painful. We come away broken as well as revulsed, proof of the devastating power of this literary tour de force.
Hospitality to the demonby Constantin Alexandrakis
Already noticed with his first novel Twice born, a hallucinatory autofictional enterprise following in the footsteps of a progenitor who never knew of his existence, Constantin Alexandrakis continues his turbulent and painful exploration of the father figure. Except that, this time, the one referred to as the “Father” is him. Or rather, it’s his character, a sort of barely disguised paper double. He is 40 years old and lives in Denmark with his wife Salomé and his little daughter. If she filled him with joy, the birth of the latter gave rise to turmoil in him. A dull pain suddenly rose to the surface.
As a child, between the ages of 8 and 12, he was abused. So, to ward off his fear of repetition, he undertakes to “map the Great Continent of Sexual Violence. » Constantly alternating between confession, novel and essay, Hospitality to the demon can be read as the masculine counterpart of sad tigera literary explosion rewarded last year with the Femina Prize and the Goncourt Prize for high school students.
As a symbol, Neige Sinno, its author, also signs the preface of Hospitality to the demon. A sublime text which gives Constantin Alexandrakis’ book increased power. A major work which will mark the annals of a literature which thinks about and heals incest and its wounds.
A lonely manby Frédéric Beigbeder
That’s the advantage of having a writer son. When you turn left, you have every chance of obtaining, in addition to your burial, a mausoleum in literature. However, it is difficult to understand the true nature of the monument that Frédéric Beigbeder is trying to erect in memory of his father. Sometimes settling of scores and cartload of reproaches echoing the sublime and corrosive Letter to father by Franz Kafka; sometimes an elegy, a song of love and admiration to an extraordinary figure: we don’t know where to turn while pacing A lonely man. In line with his French novelRenaudot Prize 2009, the facetious and provocative novelist abandons the pamphlet for the intimate investigation and goes back in time to wander through the twists and turns of an existence worthy of the most perfect fictional character.
A graduate of Harvard, pioneer of headhunters in France, jovial dandy worshiper of classics, reading Latin and Greek, passionate about philosophy and the poetry of Ronsard, his father Jean-Michel Beigbeder was all of this. But above all he was a secretive, taciturn man, convinced that “as soon as we communicate, we betray our thoughts”.
A year after his death, his son tried to get to the bottom of it. In doing so, he paints the great fresco of an era that has long been considered a golden age, but which for some time has revealed its gray areas and bears its share in the crazy destiny of the world: the carefree Trente Glorieuses . With a touching, sometimes disarming sincerity and a chiaroscuro narrative, Frédéric Beigbeder proves once again that he is never better than when he lays himself bare and accepts the contradictions and nuance that underpin all existence.
A magnificent loserby Florence Seyvos
Madness and its many faces, this inexhaustible romantic material, purveyor of both the most beautiful and the most tragic stories. Five years later A beast on the lookoutFlorence Seyvos brings Anna back to life, a character of a young girl on the edge of existence and a disturbing evocation of childhood.
Through his eyes, she sketches the bittersweet portrait of a mystifying father-in-law who has lost his footing and frees himself from the laws of reason. Confidant, both protected and victim, Anna observes this unfathomable power invade the family home with all her being and struggle against herself, but above all against the world, in a battle that is lost in advance. Through her gaze, the sensitive x-ray of a sick brain and an extraordinary figure is revealed, as inspiring as it is disturbing, as endearing as it is destructive, which has haunted the writer for too long.
