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“A friendship”, by Silvia Avallone: ​​the attraction of opposites

by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief
written by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief

A friendship

de Silvia Avallone

translated from Italian by Françoise Brun, Liana Levi, 528 p., € 23

This story of an all-consuming friendship between two teenage girls inevitably recalls The Prodigious Friend, by Elena Ferrante. As brilliant a storyteller as her Italian colleague, Silvia Avallone slips into the meanders of the same river that carries Beatrice and Elisa in its turbulent waves. And it is in T., an important seaside village “imprisoned in his anonymity”that the two teenagers met at the turn of the 2000s.

→ CRITICAL. “The Perfect Life” by Silvia Avallone

The novel opens with the discovery of a Polaroid escaped from Elisa’s diary. We are in 2019, she is 33 years old and teaches literature at the University of Bologna. Behind the photo, a date – June 14, 2001 – and four words – ” Friends forever “. Elisa, carrot-red hair cut short, an oversized sweatshirt, a suspicious smile. Beatrice, red lips, purple nails, emerald eyes, life to bite…

Then come the memories of five years of a crazy friendship that will end the night Italy won the football World Cup. A quarrel that has lasted for thirteen years. Elisa then feels the urgency to tell their story, at least “her” truth of their tumultuous relationships, made up of fascination and rejection, love and hatred, humiliation and reconciliation… “We might do each other good and harm, we had each given ourselves the keys to enter into the fragility of the other. »

The truth behind the masks

With her lively pen, with a keen sense of narration and hard-hitting dialogue, Silvia Avallone dissects the daily lives of the two friends: scooter rides, first flirtations, selfies and flamboyance for one, books and discomfort for the other… But what makes the novel so captivating are the characters who revolve around them, each weaving the threads of a canvas in the center of which Beatrice and Elisa take shape…

In the first place their mothers who “spread throughout (their) being like a creeper”. That of Elisa, a worn worker, with a messy love: “Why do you love me so little, mum? » That of Beatrice, married to a rich man, whose sole objective is to make her daughter a fashion star. Equally endearing are the men. Paolo, Elisa’s father, a reserved man whom his daughter bullies, one of the first to see the potential of the Internet. Niccolo, his brother, who sinks into alcohol and drugs. Their lovers, Lorenzo and Gabriele, overwhelmed by their excesses.

What can Elisa reveal regarding Beatrice, who has become a world-famous social media icon? Silvia Avallone probes the relationship between writing and fiction while Elisa searches in her talisman book, Lie and spell by Elsa Morante, the truth behind the masks…

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Entertainment

“Journey into unknown territory”, by David Park: a father in winter

by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief
written by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief

Journey into unknown territory

the David Park

Translated from English (Northern Ireland) by Cécile Arnaud

Quai Voltaire, 212 p., €20

When he drives off to pick up his sick son from his student residence, Tom twice fails to get started. The snow, which fell in abundance in the Belfast region where he lives and the north of England where his son Luke is, transforms the exit ramp from the family home into an ice rink.

On his first attempt, his car spins halfway up. “In the second, I almost reach the top, but the car suddenly turns sideways and slowly slides down the slope, facing an odd angle to the world. Everything is wrong, nothing is in the right place, and I am powerless to change its trajectory. » On the third try, the father of the family will go up the slope.

David Park, author of eleven books, had never been translated into French

Like this beginning strewn with pitfalls, Journey into unknown territory advances slowly, with a touching stubbornness, taking its rhythm, from the most trivial to the most intimate. At the start, it is only a question of clearing snow and loading the car. A thermos of coffee, medicine, blankets brought by Lorna, Tom’s wife, an Indian teepee added by their little girl Lilly, the CDs he chose for himself – Robert Wyatt, Van Morrison, REM, Nick Cave… –, and those that this caring father brings to Luke for the return trip, pile up in the passenger compartment. At the end of the expedition, a father will have faced an abyss of pain far more devastating than the worst rigors of cold and snow.

→ CRITICAL. LITANIES, the confined Passion of Nick Cave and Nicholas Lens

Snowy road-movie, inner journey, pilgrimage of a bruised father towards his redemption, this Journey into unknown territory reveals to French readers a great Northern Irish novelist. David Park, author of eleven books, had never been translated into French. It is fortunate that his discreet work reaches us with this novel of infinite delicacy.

A round trip that the novelist has made several times with his own son

With empathy, the author takes his narrator through a region far from the tourist routes. Leaving Belfast, Tom takes the ferry to the north of England. He will cross it from West to East, along Hadrian’s Wall on the Scottish border, to pick up his son in Sunderland, an industrious port city near Newcastle. A round trip that the novelist has made several times with his own son. “On the road, we were talking. Football, music, nothing very personal or serious. But I felt like a father bringing his son home.”, confides David Park in a text on the genesis of his novel.

→ REREAD. “The Great Game”, by Graham Swift: illusions on the pier

His travel impressions are engraved in our memories with as much precision as the shots taken by Tom, a professional photographer accustomed to weddings, births and ceremonies. They come to life under his pen. Here, trucks ready to start prancing around in the hold of a ferry that has just docked. There, a kestrel hovering over snowy fields. All along the road, furtive sketched silhouettes, children sledding, hunters…

An unforgettable male voice

Each chance encounter allows confidences that we allow ourselves, or not, on the way, with strangers, from the brief exchange with an old lady loaded with errands until the moment suspended next to an accident victim of the road waiting rescue. Outlining his story in a modest voice, Tom confronts his happy and unhappy memories as so many clichés where the moment is forever inscribed. “After this moment the story can no longer be told otherwise, you will no longer be able to rearrange the images engraved in your memory, the outcome will always be the same. »

→ MUSIC. Folk: Rhiannon Giddens sings of mourning and hope

While refining this portrait of a man gnawed by immense grief, David Park paints in small strokes an increasingly ample overall picture. With this ambitious novel with a refined count, the author makes an unforgettable male voice heard. Devoted and clumsy, loving and hurting, but no matter what, and even in the worst of winter, son, husband and father.

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Entertainment

another life than his

by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief
written by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief

Number two

by David Foenkinos

Gallimard, € 19.50, 242 p.

The original idea, which is truly delightful, is announced in a few lines at the start of the book. In 1999, hundreds of children are auditioned to find the young actor who will play Harry Potter, the hero of JK Rowling. “In the end, there were only two left. This novel tells the story of the one who was not chosen. “ Under the inventive pen of David Foenkinos, this unelected is Martin Hill, ten years old. English by his father, he grew up in London where he remained following his parents’ divorce, but from then on joined his mother in Paris every weekend, in “Back and forth between the emotions of his parents, from bitterness to hope, not always knowing very well where to be”.

Nothing predestines this boy who has not read the first two books of the Harry Potter adventures to become an actor – let alone to want to play him. “It is commonly said that chance does things well, which completely obscures the idea that it can do them just as badly”, writes David Foenkinos as an omniscient and mischievous writer. It will take two small twists of fate to place round glasses on Martin’s nose and put him in the presence of David Heyman, the producer of the films in search of his rare birdie.

Comparison and failure

In the first part, the novel fluidly interweaves the story of Martin and the legend that surrounds the Harry Potter saga, a formidable material from which David Foenkinos draws as he pleases, from the chaotic trajectory of Joanne Rowling to the choice of the initials “JK” for prevent his novel from being assimilated to “A book for girls”, from the reading of the manuscript by a producer even before its publication to the choice of a young actor, future interpreter of seven adaptations on the big screen, whose life will be forever turned upside down.

→ READ. David Foenkinos, from solitude to the duo

David Foenkinos turns a brilliant idea into a captivating novel that continues to run for two decades following a failure all the more poignant because it concerns a child. In the painful psyche of Martin with an increasingly complicated family history, the planetary success of the literary and cinematographic saga is constantly reminiscent of the life that might have become his. Corn Number two doesn’t just talk regarding comparison and failure. With his humor tinged with melancholy, David Foenkinos questions the relative definition of success and explores the paths of slow reconstruction following a pile-up that should never have happened.

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Entertainment

In 2021, the exceptional good health of the book sector

by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief
written by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief

“2021 will be remembered as an exceptional year for the book », Welcomed Vincent Montagne, president of the National Publishing Union (SNE), during His wishes to the publishing world, explaining that all sectors combined, excluding digital and audio books, the book market recorded a 20% increase in value last year compared to 2020.

Comics, general literature, youth, practical life, art books … all genres have been acclaimed by readers, with a special mention for the manga whose sales have reached 50 million copies. The president of the Média-Participations group wants to see in this global success the expression of “The essential place that books and reading have occupied in our society”.

→ INVESTIGATION. 2021, a flamboyant year for the book sector

After a slight decline of 2.3% for 2020 – good results having been partly offset by losses linked to bookstore closures during lockdowns – the past year allows the edition to post a remarkable increase. The classification by decree, in February 2021, of bookstores as ” essential shops », Following the strong commitment of the interprofession of books to the government, is a recognition in which Vincent Montagne wants to see that of books as ” essential “. He also welcomes the deployment of the culture pass, “Great opportunity to allow all our young people to have privileged access to culture and reading”.

Extension of the culture pass

The generalization of the culture pass in May 2021, supported by a network of 2,991 participating booksellers, enabled 56% of purchases by 18-year-olds, who were offered 426,000 books during the year. In 2022, the culture pass will be extended to all adolescents.

→ MAINTENANCE. “The French had an impetus towards reading and books during confinement”

In December, two bills concerning the book were definitively voted, one aiming “To consolidate the book economy”, protecting independent booksellers once morest the giants of e-commerce, the other relating to libraries, including in the heritage code the missions that govern them.

In this legislative device, Vincent Montagne wants to see the reaffirmation, once more, of “The essential place of books and reading in our society”, forty years following the Lang law was passed on the single book price.

Consolidate efforts

2022 will be the year of the consolidation of efforts, in the context not to be neglected of a lack of raw materials and in particular of paper, “Shortage which might have an impact on the price of the book”, underlined the president of the SNE. 2022 will also see the continuation of the campaign in favor of reading, “Great national cause” wanted by President Emmanuel Macron and which includes the initiative to generalize the culture pass to all young people.

On this occasion, the National Book Center has just launched a communication campaign aimed at all French people and in particular the youngest, deployed from January to March in stations in France, on street furniture in Paris, in the media. and on social networks.

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