A few months in my life. October 2022-March 2023
By Michel Houellebecq.
Flammarion, 112 pages, €12.80.
The rating of L’Express: 3/5
A few months in my life. October 2022-March 2023 By Michel Houellebecq.
© / flammarion
Finally, he will have multiplied the “exclusive” interviews. This is to say if, despite his aversion to “the usual pack of media cretins”, Michel Houellebecq wanted to make his voice heard at the end of a semester horribilis ; either, the stir caused by his joint interview with Michel Onfray in the review Popular Frontto the Dutch legal proceedings initiated by the author ofAnnihilate in order to ban the distribution of what has been called “the porn of Houellebecq”. In Act I of this vibrant and frank story, written in a fortnight, the writer therefore returns to his “squabbles” with the rector of the Great Chems-eddine Mosque Mohamed Hafiz following his remarks on Islam – some of its passages equating, to be quick, Muslims and delinquents and planning a civil war in “entire territories under Islamist control”. He defeats his guilt again, talks about stupidity, thanks the rector for his leniency…
But it is on Act II that Houellebecq really concentrates his energy and twirls his warrior pen. The author enrages and recounts in detail the various meetings that led to the film by Dutch director Stefan Ruitenbeek, nicknamed here the Cockroach, a film that Houellebecq will ultimately be authorized to view before its broadcast. The man does not hide it: he likes sex, threesomes, amateur porn, alcohol, anxiolytics: an explosive cocktail that pushes him to multiply the “bullshit”, until signing an unfair contract with the Cockroach one evening in December 2022. It is up to the reader to judge the strength of his plea. Marianne Payot
The one who saw the forest grow
By Lina Nordquist, trans. from Swedish by Marina Heide.
Buchet-Chastel, 448 pages, €24.
The rating of L’Express: 3/5
He Who Saw the Forest Grow By Lina Nordquist, trans. from Swedish by Marina Heide.
© / Buchet Chastel
If it was voted best novel of the year 2022 in Sweden, there is little chance that The one who saw the forest grow has been sponsored by the Swedish tourist office, so much its 450 pages carry its share of desolation, deprivation, and violence in the region of Hälsingland, where forests and wild animals, snow and storms, heat and droughts reign. Let’s add to the picture a few unsavory individuals (merchant, owner) driven by stinginess or sexual appetite… In short, with this first novel, the physiologist and deputy Lina Nordquist strikes hard, reminding her compatriots of the dark past of their welfare state. .
Two voices alternate in this story which centers around a family farm inhabited by three generations: that of Unni, who, pursued by the hatred of a pastor, fled her native Norway in 1897; and that of Kara, in 1973, daughter-in-law of Roar, Unni’s son. Two voices that unite to form this ardent social chronicle against a backdrop of nature writing. Said of the gär, följer jag (“Where you go, I follow you”) is the original title of the novel, but also what Armod, Unni’s formidable companion, will repeat all his life. It is with this generous and valiant man, that the young woman will try to make their hovel viable and face the dangers, the cold and the hunger (a feeling described here in a breathtaking way, just like the scene of the fight against a bear) . Then it’s Roar who, still a kid, will take over when Armod perishes under a tree, and will radiate with his kindness and his limitless work force this Nordic saga that grips the guts. PM
The Regent. A prince for the Enlightenment
By Thierry Sarmant.
Perrin, 252 pages, €25.
The rating of L’Express: 4/5
The Regent. A prince for the Enlightenment By Thierry Sarmant.
© / Perrin
The period (1715-1723) is often caricatured as “this pleasant Regency where everything was done except penance”, according to the rhyme of Voltaire. As for the Regent himself, was he, as Chateaubriand said, “the most immoral man of his century”? Contrary to these libertine clichés maintained in the collective unconscious by the film Let the festivities begin of Bertrand Tavernier, Thierry Sarmant prefers to extend the analysis of Le Roy Ladurie, who saw in these eight years a “conservative transition”. Certainly impious and gallant, the Regent had a good background. Recovering a kingdom ruined by the wars of his uncle Louis XIV, he was able to straighten the ship before handing over the controls to his nephew Louis XV. A hard worker who got up early, he didn’t spend his time in orgies. Yes, he listened too much to the intriguing Cardinal Dubois and probably got into a rush for John Law. But he withstood the cabals of the Duchess of Maine as well as a willingly smothering mother – the fearsome Madame Palatine, whose assassin wit lends a lot of salt to these pages…
It should be noted that this book appears in the collection La Bibliothèque des illustrés, directed at Perrin by Charles-Eloi Vial, with the assistance of the BnF. We are not here in ideological and cold history. The Library of the Illustrious brings history to life by offering clear summaries, magnified by a rich iconography. We strongly advise those who do not have the courage to read Saint-Simon to begin with this brilliant initiation to the Regency. Louis-Henri de La Rochefoucauld