What do spring books have in store for us? They are sometimes where we least expect them (an intimate story for Salman Rushdiea novel in the Dickens era by Zadie Smith) or, on the contrary, cultivate themes that we know about them (the release of one’s mother for Edward Louisthe music of the words of Marie Modianofemale bonds at Deborah Levy). In any case, reading them sheds new light on this spring of 2024.
Salman Rushdie, the story of a (sur)life
“I don’t like the idea of writing being therapy, writing is writing, therapy is therapy, but there was a good chance that writing this story would help me to feel better ”: we have never read him so intimate, and yet we find, here and there, his lyricism. Because it is not an assassination attempt that will prevent Salman Rushdie from picking up his pen. Just like the fatwa launched against him, following the publication of Satanic verses (which his accusers had clearly not read correctly) had not dried up his inspiration. It is therefore a question of telling what happened on August 12, 2022, this day when a man stabbed him several times in the middle of a conference, in the United States, then after: these days between life and death, the long, very long recovery… with the slump, pragmatic details not occupying superb flights of fancy on man’s capacity to rebuild himself.
The before is also summoned: the nightmares and his own premonitory writings, as well as the love which binds him to his writer wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths. This is at the center of this autobiographical story, where vulnerability, humor and bravery intertwine and never contradict each other, making Knife one of the most beautiful books Salman Rushdie.
Salman Rushdie – The Knife, reflections following an assassination attempt
The inner journey of Marie Modiano
What these two lovers are running from, we don’t know. But when they arrive on the island of Capri, where they are asked to give a show, everything changes. Unless this has already been the case… Everything responds and opposes each other here: the past and the present, the real and the imaginary, love and lack. “We travel together miles of dreams and, behind our closed eyelids, it is a waltz of landscapes that never stops spinning.” Landscapes that can just as easily be interiors.
In the new hybrid novel by Marie Modiano, the inventiveness of the narrator (who is not alone in expressing herself!) is revealed with writing that gives pride of place to poetry. With the aptly named Inner island, we dream while standing, following a fluid writing that questions what it is to be an artist. And therefore human… Note, an album recorded with his companion, the Swedish musician Peter von Poehl, Capri- Ballad of the Spiritswill complete this multi-sensory reading.
Marie Modiano – The Inner Island
Zadie Smith’s most beautiful novel
“Mrs Touchet had a theory. England did not exist. England was an elaborate sham. Nothing real was happening in England. This country was all dinners, boarding schools and bankruptcies. Everything else, everything that the English made and made, desired and took, used and rejected, took place elsewhere.” Eliza Touchet is without a doubt the most beautiful female character created by the Anglo-Jamaican writer Zadie Smith, who also gives the floor to another equally memorable one, Andrew Bogle, for a few confessional chapters on slavery in Jamaica, in parallel with a trial for imposture. A witty woman, a keen reader with a pen that is best hidden, Mrs Touchet lost her husband and child at a very young age and moved in with her cousin by marriage, William Ainsworth. Which (like Mrs Touchet) really existed, having written a gaggle of grandiloquent novels in the 19th century. But Eliza’s great love is William’s (first) wife: Frances.
