We left you last week in Israel the day after October 7, 2023 on the occasion of the release of The announcement (Gallimard) by Pierre Assouline. It is also this date, that of the massacre operated by Hamas, which will sustainably shake the fate of Théo, one of the heroes of the fascinating and subtle novel by Nathalie Azoulai, All The Théo’s lives (POL), rich in many burning themes of the time, Judeity, Israeli-Palestinian war, anti-Semitism, communitarianism …
But we have to start at the start, which promises to be under the best auspices. Théo Ravier, 25, soon art historian, ignites for Léa Woks, rubbed shoulders with an initiator shooting session. She is Jewish, and that’s good. Théo’s mother, Franco-German, having stopped raising it in “never again”, sees in this ideal brute a way “to finally clean up her genealogy”. With Rose, Léa’s younger sister and her “mensch” of a Breton pretender, Benjamin Le Gallec, they soon form a pretty quartet, dubbed by the clan, parents, grandmother, cousins, and all the dead in the pogroms or in the camps. A harmony completed by the birth of their respective daughters, Noémie and Lou. Léa is now a lawyer, Théo, art critic specialist in Shoah …
The anniversary of Théo arrives, a certain October 7, 2023, a birthday party which he will be deprived forever. Léa who, when I got back from Israel a short time ago “if I was not Jewish, I would be anti -Semitic”, slips into a long well of silence, except to converse day and night with her dear cousin Dan, member of intelligence Israeli, and with what she calls her “niche of the Jews”, then tracks the remark, the false step in her entourage, panic before the rise of anti -Semitism. The kicks down with the conversion of Noémie to Catholicism, a large gold cross around the neck. While Rose, tired of defending Israel against Gaza, is moving away. Just as, soon, Théo, who succumbs to the advances of Maya, 27, a dapper Middle East painter (of Lebanon-American father and Syrian mother). Everything here is in the style of Nathalie Azoulai, falsely casual, kindly ironic, devilishly sagacious. All The Théo’s livesa novel to read before the slightest steep position.