Recent publications from France
Anita Brookner
It would seem that non-fiction — or life — is taking over from fiction in France this year. The outstanding book, which held its own against more recent publications, was Emmanuel Carrere's L'Adversaire, about a spectacular series of murders which took place in 1993, recounted with a novelist's narrative skill by a former winner of the Prix Medicis who was intrigued, troubled, and finally haunted by a bizarre affair of which he chose to study the aftermath.
On the 9 January 1993 Jean-Claude Romand killed his wife, his children, and his parents, and tried to immolate himself in his house, to which he had set fire. He was rescued, tried, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
To the outside world he represented worldly success. He was an eminent doctor at the World Health Organisation; he was happily married, and apparently financially secure. The truth of the matter was that he was not a doctor at all. On the strength of a year as a medical student he had famil- iarised himself with the style and was able to frequent the WHO building as a habitué. The rest of his time he spent in municipal parks or motorway service stations, returning home every evening to a hero's welcome. He was funded by his par-. ents and by friends and colleagues for whom he offered to invest their savings, explaining that interest on their accounts would take some time to accumulate. He kept up this masquerade for an incredible 18 years, until the strain became too great and all his myth-making resources began to fail him. That was when he murdered his family and apparently wished to kill him- self, a wish that was not granted, or which he, at the last moment, abjured.
His guilt was not in any doubt. The author, Carrere, intrigued by the reports, attended the trial, corresponded with Romand in prison, and finally wrote a seamless account of what was by any stan- dards a highly unusual case. But that was not the end of the story, not by a long chalk. On hearing the verdict of life impris- onment, a well-meaning woman took up Romand's cause, informed him that she was praying for him, and in no time at all formed a prayer group intent on his salva- tion. From prison Romand wrote to his supporters, manifesting that mixture of euphoria and self-abasement so precious to those seeking signs of remorse. Remorse there undoubtedly was, but of a self-serving kind: so much goodwill was expressed on both sides that gratification was immense. Through the agency of the group Romand was transformed into what he had never been in his previous life: a deserving case. Of his more sinister pathology no trace remained. Only Carrere's brilliant account stood, or stands, as an indictment. Pub- lished in France by P.O.L., L'Adversaire will appear in translation in the coming year. It should not be missed. Although it came out last January it continues to res- onate, putting mere fictions into a category that seem infinitesimally reduced.
I also liked Une Jeunesse a l'Ombre de is Lumiere (Gallimard) by Jean-Marie Rouart, defiantly described as a novel on the cover but in fact an autobiography interspersed with travel notes. The narra- tor, like Young Werther, describes his sen- timental disappointments, his professional false starts, and above all his melancholy. Verifiably descended from a family of painters and friends of painters, the narra- tor, or Rouart, writes, in a particularly mel- lifluous French, of his early years, which to him were overshadowed by failure, but fail- ure seen through the years of later success, when various resignations and sackings have resolved themselves into the life of an esteemed writer and member of the Academie Frangaise. Intriguingly he con- centrates on the humiliations of his youth, when confusion could only be resolved by flight. His instinct was sound, and served him well. This mildly addictive narrative might have been written at the beginning of the 19th century and proves, against the odds, that confession, which may or may not be good for the soul, is eminently attractive on the page.
This would have been my choice for the Prix Goncourt, which was in fact won by Jean-Jacques Schuhl's Ingrid Caven (Galli- mard). The same blurring of the borders between fact and fiction is apparent here. Ingrid Caven is a biography of the singer- actress wife of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, unapologetic and undisguised, told by an intermediary named Charles who stands in for the author. Proper names abound: Wal- ter Gieseking, Albert Schweitzer, Andy Warhol, and many others. Ingrid Caven's career is traced from childhood, when she sang for Nazi troops, to her present old age. Too little fiction here to turn this into a work of pure invention, and complicated by a hectic cinematic style which bullies the reader into ever more reluctant submission. An ambitious novel, but not a great one.
The Prix Renaudot was awarded to Ahmadou Kourouma for Allah n'est pas oblige" (Seuil), a worthy account of a jour- ney across Liberia and Sierra Leone taken by an orphan, Birahima, in search of his aunt. Since he is only ten years old and without means, he enlists as a child soldier in one of the many tribal conflicts on offer. Although littered with acronyms and told largely in patois the novel maintains its pace, no small achievement in such a dis- heartening panorama of actuality. Indeed so up to date is it that it contains much information of interest to statesmen and policy-makers, if only we could be sure that novels figured in their world-view. These two awards were not controversial: in the case of the Schuhl a consensus seems to have been arrived at fairly early in the proceedings, although alternative voices were readily available in the large number of novels published this autumn. One such was Dans ces bras-la (P.O.L.) by Camille Laurens, an emotional and erotic soliloquy which will be eagerly read by women, although the whole exercise is directed at men. The narrator, also called Camille, is no Bridget Jones: she enacts nothing less than the desire and pursuit of the whole. The frail structure of the novel is provided by a mere pretext. Camille is a stalker, and her prey is a psychiatrist, to whom she con- fides her intemperate outpourings. These encompass every man she has ever known, from her father onwards, through many lovers and a husband to her still-born son. What,is engaging in this frequently disturb- ing account is the heroine's demand for the impossible: she seeks to understand her partners, and those who are not yet her partners, and more, to become them. Many transferences are at work here; disappoint- ment is enmeshed with a kind of heroism. Even the bald honesty is heroic, as is the lyrical conclusion. The narrator is a ratio- nalist, a cynic. This makes her despair all the more convincing. Dans ces bras-la was awarded the Prix Femina. The Prix Medicis went to Yann Apperry for Diabolus in Musica (Grasset), a novel about a child musician, and the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Acadenne Frangaise to Pascal Quignard for Terrasse a Rome (Gallimard), in which a mythical 17th-century engraver, supposedly a friend of the painter Claude, muses about life and other abstractions. This particular prize 1s awarded on an overall assessment of previ- ous and current work. Quignard's best known novel is Tous les Matins du Monde, which was made into a successful film.
Finally, a hair-raising thriller from the redoubtable Jean-Christophe Grange, who in the space of a few years has made a name for himself with novels that bridge the gap between horror and detection. Le Concile de Pierre (Albin Michel) encom- passes telepathy, hypnosis, psychokinesis, state secrets and recondite forms of killing. Reading one's way into the maze one begins to fear for the author's sanity. No post-modern irony here: this is sincere, not to say blatant. Badly written, unravelling deliriously towards the end, Le Candle de Pierre is a thoroughly subversive exercise. I loved it.
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