This novel, which dominated sales in several countries, can be read at the first degree, with suspense as a bonus. François, a 44-year-old professor, a bachelor, a fan of the microwave, YouPorn and a sexuality connected to the alternating current with his students, will he dare to be happy with Myriam? And before the election of a Muslim president in France, will he convert to Islam to boost his career, and become a "collabo"? Beyond that, this novel is a fable about the cynicism of our society and its contradictory need for religion.
G. CH.
Ed. Flammarion, 21 €.
A life like any other? Darcy O'Brien was the son of a well-known Hollywood actor before the war and an actress mother on men and alcohol ... For the child raised by two revelers as irresponsible as they are, attachment, existence passes quickly from the fairy tale to the settling of accounts. The furniture flew, the mother convolved, the father fled and the son consoled. Darcy O'Brien tells - with great humor, this zig-zag childhood, with, at the casting, the sacred monsters of the time. Succulent.
FG
Ed. Of the Underground, 19 €.
In 1943, Marceline was 15 years old and was called Rozenberg when she was deported with her beloved father, Salomon, to Auschwitz. One day, at the camp, Solomon succeeded in sending a letter to his daughter. Words of love and hope that Marceline, plunged into the heart of hell, swallows up and erases not to be vulnerable, because "there, there is freezing from the inside so as not to die." Seventy-two years later, she replied. And her words upset us.
CD
Ed. Grasset, 12,90 €.
In this truthful account, the author convoys a bitch from Montana to New York, to hand it over to her buyer, Clark Rockefeller. A member of the lineage of American billionaires, this original will become friends with the writer, who will not learn until years later that he was a psychopath, an imposter and a murderer. Walter Kirn tries, among other things, to answer this painful question: what are, in my case, the unreliable defects that explain this friendship and the incredible naivety I have shown?
G. CH.
Ed. Christian Bourgois, translated from English (United States) by Eric Chédaille, 21 €.
It was the pulse of the beat generation, their "master at all", wrote Allen Ginsberg. Beautiful, writing his life with his guts. Heterosexual and youthful lover of Ginsberg, friend of Jack Kerouac, who inspires Dean Moriarty in "On the road". The correspondence of Neal Cassady is a trans-American epic, carried out thoroughly, dope, women, cars. It pulsates, and it's as good as a novel that would regenerate our monochrome era. This second collection of letters - from 1951 to 1968 - emerged as a lighthouse in the mist, one year after the first (1944-1950).
DC
Ed Finitude, 22 €.
In the most famous photograph of the author of this irresistible little book, she plays naked chess against Marcel Duchamp. In 1963, Eve Babitz is 20 years old, she is beautiful and plays her dice life more often than at chess. A Californian sun girl and a couple of artists, she will collect, in the 60s and 70s, lovers, from Jim Morrison to Harrison Ford. In love with freedom, love and festivals, she recounts, like a Sagan of Sunset Boulevard, a few slices of her fucking and chic life, where laughter subtly dresses emotion.
G. CH.
Ed. Gallmeister, translated from English (United States) by Gwilym Tonnerre, 11 €.
"The opposite of death is not life, it is sex. That is why Blanca, while her mother starts her last journey in the hospital, embarks in hand-to-hand combat dedicated to the only activity that can overcome nothingness. Throughout this little magic book, to reassemble the pieces and prolong life, she speaks to the one who soon is no longer. She tells him the summer she will spend in the family home of Cadaqués, where she sets out to settle with children, lover and ex-husbands. This solar book, discreet nostalgia and infinite charm, invites the beautiful marriage of body and spirit.
G. CH.
Ed. Gallimard, translated from Spanish by Robert Amutio, 16,50 €.
The author of this Japanese road movie, on a young woman who is on the run with the baby she has just kidnapped, shares the qualities common to many Japanese novelists: a sense of the amazing shortcut, a way to go to the simplest and at the deepest that makes everything clear without effacing the mystery. Taken by action, one follows, the short breath, the adventures of this surrogate mother and her stolen baby, between which a true love relationship is woven. A dramatic turn, which is not novel, opens the second part of this long, captivating novel, which is found too short.
G. CH.
Ed. Actes Sud, 22,80 €.
Notice to all fans of Commissioner Adamsberg: this summer, do not hesitate to dive into his new adventure. You will find it there equal to itself, mysterious and familiar. This time with a double intrigue, the last Fred Vargas wears a palette of rich, human and well-researched characters to whom we can only attach, with some unusual and surprising details. Of course, it is impossible to let go of this thriller before turning the last page ... even, and especially, for who does not like the thrillers.
CR
Ed. Flammarion, 19,90 €.
The Town-Country could be Lumumba, Kinshasa or Lagos, torn to pieces by greed, disembowelled by mining appetites, priced, stripped. The Tram 83, bar-nightclub, swallows each night the girls with big breasts tomatoes, the evil thugs in sex, empty bellies, thirsty. Among this fauna of liars, Lucien, an uncertain writer, strolls his notebook with a manifest failure. It's crazy, it fucks, it lives, it is Africa dismembered-untamed, written with a lung, caught in the rapids of a baroque and delirious language.
DC
Ed. Métailié, 16 €.
