Monument National
the Julia Deck
Midnight Editions, 206 p., € 17
The “national monument” is Serge Langlois, the fictitious equivalent of a Delon or a Belmondo, the aged glory of French cinema around which the many characters of the novel revolve in his castle. Choosing for the title this emphatic cliché is well in the ironic and tongue-in-cheek manner of Julia Deck, well known since Viviane Elisabeth Fauville, his first novel published in 2012, and we revel once again, in this fifth book, of his art of painting the time, elegantly but ruthlessly, in light and cruel touches.
→ CRITICAL. Julia Deck’s “Private Property”, Mysteries and Neighborhood
We also find his taste for the “eccentric policeman” genre, for buried secrets and obscure plots, skillfully knotted in two main narrative lines which quickly converge: that of the announced fall of Maison Langlois; that of the intriguing trajectory of a mysterious Super U cashier, “Cendrine”, of whom we immediately know that her real name is. Let us add that the young narrator, adopted daughter of Langlois, seems less and less reliable according to the novel.
A motley fauna
Around Langlois, the family, employees and other satellites constitute a motley fauna, where the clash between the interests of some and the ambitions of others feeds a teeming story. We thus meet Ambre, the young ex-Miss Provence wife, eager for digital popularity, Abdul the handsome sports coach from the suburbs, Madame Eva the stilted manager, Ralph the silent driver, Aminata, Cendrine’s alluring colleague, and many other singular figures, with a brief but cheerful appearance of the Macron couple.
If, with such casting, Deck draws pleasure from the boulevardière vein, its sober and mischievous writing stages a show that evokes less a Christian Clavier frankness than the grimacing and sophisticated pranks of the Coen brothers.
→ READ. Julia Deck, the shadow of art
Above all, beyond the narrative virtuosity, Monument national sketch a reflection on the fantasies and dreams that drive us. Each character strives to shape an image of himself and of the world and to adjust it, as best they can, to reality: one “Instagrams” her life, the other dreams of being a star of the song, this one invents imaginary beings, that one a new identity, etc.
Thus the recurring evocation of yellow vests or that of confinement are not simple backdrops to “make contemporary”: they indicate the collective, socio-political horizon of this tension between desires and their fulfillment, in a novel that is more than premium entertainment.
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