No gift ideas for Christmas? Nine original books to put under the tree – L’Express

Erasure

By Philippe Claudel and Lucille Clerc.

Stock, 127 p., €18.50.

This is a short and gripping book that we recommend to readers of Conrad and Hemingway. A fisherman with the face of an American actor (halfway between Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford) is at the helm of the boat. Erasure. If his nets are full, his house is empty: his son deserted after almost drowning one day when he was accompanying his father… No news since. Will he see him again? We follow our (not so old) man braving the elements and his inner torments, in a harsh language that marries waves and storms.

After his ambitious Dino Buzzati-style fable, Duskpublished last January, Philippe Claudel takes the opposite view with Erasure : it is your choice of a short illustrated novel (by the artist Lucille Clerc, who designed the covers of The Dog Archipelago, German fantasy and said Dusk) or a long prose poem. Although Claudel still lives in his native Lorraine, we feel that the call of the open sea is not foreign to him. Academician Goncourt will you always cherish the sea? Louis-Henri de La Rochefoucauld

A room at the Mekong hotel

By Jean-Luc Coatalem.

Stock, 150 p., €18.90.

Breton travel writer, journalist in the four corners of the world, Jean-Luc Coatalem could have set his sights on any other museum. But it was at the Guimet Museum, this “Louvre of Asia”, Place d’Iéna (Paris-16th), that he chose to spend a few hours, “absolutely and magnificently alone”, in order to nourish the very well-attended “My night at the museum” collection. Papé, his grandfather, came there every weekend to dilute his melancholy, so why not him? A must that this “universal and humanist” museum with neoclassical architecture for the author of Last King of Angkor and works on Gauguin and Segalen.

Obviously, his imagination is running wild. He is in the Orient with the family soldiers (grandfather and uncle on his father’s side), he is in Laos, on the island of Khong, throwing out some notes from a book which would have been called “A Room at the Mékong hotel”, he remembers thinking of stealing a small painting by Van de Velde located in the Richelieu wing of the Louvre… Return to the museum and its vast Khmer courtyard. A quick word about Emile Guimet (1836-1918), a wealthy businessman and patron, who constituted “the largest collection of Asian art outside Asia”, and the visit begins. And again the memories flood. A night with Jean-Luc Coatalem is like making a thousand journeys, quietly, in complete serenity… Marianne Payot

The Extraordinarium

By Mathias Malzieu.

The Pocket Book, 1,600 p., €29.90.

The collection is called Majuscules, which means that Le Livre de Poche has bent over backwards to accommodate the writings of Mathias Malzieu. We find in this hardback collection the novels of the singer of the group Dionysos, of The mechanics of the heart At Porcelain Warrior passing, among other things, by Diaries of a Vampire in Pajamas And A mermaid in Paris. But it also offers ten unpublished texts, inserted between each novel. A sort of spin-off, they link its characters to its own person. “I embarked on a literary marathon, a dive into the cities, swallowed up by my dreams, true false twins of my reality,” writes the facetious lyricist-writer-singer.

Mathias Malzieu does not stop there, since he also releases the album Dionysos with Extraordinary, as the soundtrack to his book, with each song echoing the book. Finally, the insatiable artist presents O wonderful childhood (HarperCollins/Wagram Livres, €21.90), a collection of collective short stories. For this credo to the wonders of childhood, he called on a “squad of poetic resistance fighters”: among them, Juliette Adam, Aldebert, Josiane Balasko, Baptiste Beaulieu, Cali, Magyd Cherfi, Cécile Coulon, Sacha Goldberger, Virginie Grimaldi , Philibert Humm, Agnès Martin-Lugand, Olivier Ruiz, Zep. What beautiful people! MP

The Imaginary Novel. The game

Designed by Yves Czerczuk.

Gallimard, €35.

Or all the literature on a board in 1250 questions and challenges… A game aimed at anyone curious about letters from 14 years old, played by 2 to 6 players and aimed at “all levels, thanks to the clues which will help those who doubt!” There you go, you know almost everything. Ah no, that’s missing the point of the game… It’s about finishing reading the Imaginary novel before the others. This work, lost for a hundred years, is reputed to be a masterpiece.

But before you collect it, you’ll need to answer a series of questions, such as: “What did Franz Kafka want for his work after his death?”, followed by two clues (which you’ll discover if you buy the box). Or again: “In which country does the action of Martin Paz by Jules Verne?” (clue No. 2, in Colombia, Brazil or Peru?) but also “On which island does the Ramsay family wander in The Lighthouse Walk by Virginia Woolf?” As for the challenges, it could be “mimic the answer to the next question” or “give the title of the novel that you wrote about your love life”… In short, the perfect catch-up exercise to shine in society. MP

Wine is making its revolution. Zadig number 20

Editions Zadig, 170 p., €19.

As usual, the quarterly created by Éric Fottorino is rich in information, testimonies and musings. In this winter delivery, we will find a column by Karine Tuil on the power of words, a short story by Adeline Dieudonné entitled “The cult of the car”, a text by Philippe Besson entitled “The School of my childhood”, a report by Christophe Boltanski on a news item that took place in Ile-Saint-Denis, a story about a jigsaw offered to Philippe Claudel, a long conversation with Pierre Richard who recounts his journey from Parisian asphalt to the land of Aude …And, a choice piece, the “wine” set, i.e. no less than 70 pages devoted to the “divine beverage” approached from the most diverse angles (note the investigation “How the Chinese invested the Bordeaux region”), from the harvest to organic, including the labels and Carole Bouquet, the “passionate”. MP

The Words of Q. Joyful Manifesto of Sexualities

By Camille Aumont Carnel.

Le Robert, 400 p., €19.90.

If the title scares, the publisher reassures. Yes, any dictionary labeled by the venerable Robert publishing house cannot be fallacious. It is therefore a dictionary designed by Camille Aumont Carnel, 26-year-old opinion leader, creator of the account @jemenbatsleclito. You do not know ? You are the only ones, the young militant feminist with a million followers… One thing is certain, Camille is not afraid.

She talks here about periods, orgasmic sleep, masturbation, ejaculation and sexual abuse. And wonders about many expressions such as “losing your virginity”, “doing dirty”, “slut shaming”, “playing a starfish”… The lady’s interventions are answered by those of Noémie Marignier, specialist sociolinguist issues of gender and sexuality. In short, we learn a lot about the body, the habits, customs and language of generations Y and Z… Recommended for everyone (except the most prudish, of course). MP

Manhattan. New York Skyline

Photographs by Laurent Dequick, texts by Marie Burnel.

Oak, 120 p., €49.90.

It’s a book of excess, at the height of the Big Apple. With its box and its dimensions (33 cm by 25.2), this Manhattan, from the East River to the Hudson River, will delight fans of the American archipelago. This spectacular 38 meter long leaflet unfolds the famous skyline endlessly. All based on an idea from Laurent Dequick, an architect by training, who successfully published in 2019 Grand Canal, wanted to reiterate his crazy bet. To create this panorama, the photographer traveled by boat along the two rivers bordering the island of Manhattan (i.e. 15 kilometers per bank) starting from Ellis Island. Under his lens, the Financial District, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller University, etc., then turn around across the Hudson and emerge West Harlem, the Upper West Side, Hell’s Kitchen… The skyscrapers, which appeared from the end of the 19th century, take on their full dimension here. As for Marie Burnel, a historian specializing in urban planning in North America, she tells us, in a few lines, the history of the city’s main buildings.

For those who prefer the excess of Los Angeles, the same publisher, Chêne, offers a beautiful album composed by the Australian photographer George Byrne, Surreality (144 p., €39.90). Byrne takes a unique look at his adopted city, resulting in an abstract series of colorful photographs, each image resembling a painting by David Hockney or a shot by American photographer William Eggleston. MP

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man

By Paul Newman, trans. From the American by Serge Chauvin.

Editions de La Table Ronde, 336 p., €24.50.

We haven’t read it yet but we still recommend it. How can you resist the irresistible Paul Newman? Released in the United States in 2022, this autobiography is based on interviews and testimonies collected by his friend Steward Stern, but germinated in Newman’s mind in 1986 as indicated by his daughter Melissa Newman in her warm preface. The two friends tackled the task until 1991, then became discouraged, “overwhelmed by the quantity of material amassed”. Paul Newman died in 2008 at the age of 83, soon joined by his friend. In 2019, producer Emily Wachtel exhumed all of the interviews, revealing a man speaking “lively, crudely, in all his intimacy”. It’s this man, a Hollywood star if ever there was one, a dream actor (Cat on a Hot Tin Tin Roof, The Grifter, The Color of Money, Butch Cassidy and the Kid, The Tower of Hell, The Policeman, The Verdict, The Paths of Perdition…) that we discover here, far from the glitter. MP

Guidebook

By Simon Parcot and Paul de Chatelperron.

Glénat, 146 p., €25.95.

He excited us in 2022 with The Edge of the World is vertical (The word and the rest), condensed of adventures, friendships, dizzying altitudes, conquests of the useless, poetry and metaphysics. In the company of Simon Parcot, philosopher, organizer of philosophy hikes or even “peddler of thought”, the mountain becomes magical and the man extravagant. Here he is again in a new tribute to the mountain and its guides, who take us from valley to valley and from summit to summit. With Paul de Chatelperron, painter of the heights, he went to meet around twenty guides, men and women, young and old. Jean Annequin, Lise Billon, Patrick Gabarrou, Fanny Schmutz, Gérard Turc, Paulo Grobel, Lionel Daudet, Patrick Guillaume… And so many life lessons. MP