Fall is my favorite season. Even back when it meant having to go back to school (which I loathed, until university), I loved the change in the weather, the excuse to shop for new clothes, the chill in the air, the smell of burning leaves, my birthday, and Halloween....
But since I moved to France there's a whole new reason to love the fall: la rentrée littéraire. A crop of new books hits the shelves and everyone gets in a tizzy about it-- how many are published this year, as opposed to last year, as opposed to ten years ago; some critics vaunting their favorite must read new authors, others getting catty about the new offerings from their favorite bêtes noires; speculation about who's going to be shortlisted for what prize; complaints about the culture médiatique that heaps attention on certain titles while completely overlooking others; and the sheer overwhelming joy of walking into a bookshop and seeing all those beautiful new books spread out everywhere, wrapped with a red paper ribbon declaring what prizes the author has won, or what successes he has previously had. Sometimes the ribbon just restates the obvious: the name of the author and the title of the book. A French book without a red paper ribbon is like an entrée without garnish. It's not really necessary, but without it, something's missing.
Le Figaro has a roundup of the top ten books of the rentrée. Here is a translated, editorialized recap of the first five (I'll give you the next five tomorrow):
Amélie Nothomb, Le Voyage d'hiver (Albin Michel). She of the famous red and black striped fingerless gloves and the inexplicable fetish for Japan returns with her 18th novel. Le Figaro writes: "In this volume (whose title is borrowed from Schubert), the narrator meets... a novelist with an unsophisticated spirit but who has been very successful." Le Figaro calls it "sharp, psychedelic"; "Nothomb teaches us that form is as important as foundation."
Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, Fragments d'une femme perdue (Grasset). From the famous ex-TF1 anchorman PPDA (pronounced "pé pé dé ah"), a "polyphonic novel around the figure of a woman called Violette, the kind of person too often described as a 'femme fatale.' Fatal for whom? Patrick Poive d'Arvor, who knows well of which he speaks, unveils throughout the narrative the multiple facets of meeting someone--desire, love, venom-- everything that makes the salt and the honey of a relationship." Can you imagine Dan Rather writing a book about being obsessed with a femme fatale?
Marie NDiaye, Trois Femmes Puissants (Gallimard). "From the versatile, Prix Femina-winning novelist and playwright, "NDiaye paints the portrait of three female characters in search of revenge on life, who refuse the destiny it has laid out for them. Three women with no connection between them, whose paths cross very briefly. They have one thing in common: an inability not to submit to men, and to society."
Eliette Abécassis, Sépharade (Albin Michel). "Almost 500 pages of the history of the Jews of Morocco, the kind of epic rarely seen in literature, and a beautiful family tree. Eliette Abécassis seizes her subject with ambition and passion, all the while dealing with the underlying question of the quest for identity, one which is even more complicated when one's identity is multiple."
Frédéric Beigbeder, Un roman français (Grasset). France's favorite party boy writer takes on the family novel. "Childhood is a novel," he writes; "A family confession from the hellion of French literature, strewn over close to 300 pages. An intimate narrative which hides nothing about his formative years, growing up in a bourgeois family in Béarn. Beigbeder has finally let go of his habitual swashbuckling and tales of escapades with melancholy sprites to give us this novel, which is touching because it is without artifice, written by a wounded man."
They all sound so good-- and I still haven't finished reading everything I wanted to read from last year'srentrée! Oh, life. So many books, so little time.
Ah, you've made me miss Strasbourg very much. (I went to university there for two years.) The bookshops, yes, & also my bday (which is always better celebrated in France...no one teases about one's age, which is so mean), & riding my bicycle in the parks, the orangerie...sniff.
I look forward to part 2, however.
Posted by: Susan | August 17, 2009 at 11:23 PM