He met Jules while he was in a part of the village that intrigued him. “I too would like to enter these walls”he confided to her. “Tomorrow, Arthur and I are going around the wall. Meet at my place this evening, at the very bottom of the Vôye from Bous. You will stay at home and sleep. My parents will agree.” Jules says to him.
We don’t really know when the author, a 36-year-old agronomist and photographer, places his story. Still, it has a delicious old-fashioned taste featuring children with boundless enthusiasm, left to their own devices in the heart of the forest, in the middle of the woods, in a labyrinth of branches and foliage.
Maxime Bultot “The hottest year”
Once you cross the old wall, you enter Hermeline’s domain. “Private Property – No Entry”. When you’re a child, what’s more intoxicating, more thrilling than wanting to transgress the forbidden, just to wander up and down the hills with an ultimate impression of freedom?
Clear and lively writing
At first, we enjoy the truant school aspect mixed with the 400 blows of this story. Then, surreptitiously, Olivier Terlinden’s pen becomes more serious. Thus François perceives in Hermeline’s guardian, “a wound”. “I felt it. As wounded animals recognize each other and attract each other, I always felt drawn towards the lame, the crippled.”
When his grandfather died, his grandmother was placed in care, but François asked to continue spending his holidays in the village. Because, during a last adventure alongside Jules and Arthur, while a sow threatened to charge, he had to flee his friends and found himself in the famous forbidden domain. It was there that Olivier Terlinden introduced him to an old man, “both squire and gardener”guardian of a treasure.
Zoé Derleyn “Standing in the water”
But what treasure could it possibly be? From the first pages, the Belgian author had provided some clue by immersing the reader in what turns out to be a character in its own right in the story: nature. From earth to sky, from stagnant mud to the coming storm, she invites herself between each line.
Here is a story, written in classic, lucid and lively writing, which will remind many readers of a part of their childhood – if they too spent it with an ancestor who took them to discover the riches of nature .
François’s first romantic emotions and the taunts of his friends are revealed to be irresistible: “Good ! The treasure is still passing away, but when are you going to decide to go see your quail, poor bastard!” Tasty.
⇒ Beyond the old wall | Novel | Olivier Terlinden, Weyrich, Plumes du Coq collection, 147 pp., €16
EXTRACT
“Jules made us lie down at the foot of a scrawny alder, dirty like the other trees. The damp earth in which we were lying, wet with excrement, gave off a smell of urine, slurry and rotten eggs. From one With a slight movement of his chin, Jules indicated to us the wallow. In its midst, an enormous sow was wallowing in the stagnant water. The steaming mud produced a thin mist, transforming the animal into a ghost of colossal dimensions. “a bit thick, his thighs were those of a draft horse.”
