Garden of love
Marcus Malte
Zulma, January 2007,
318 páginas
Corinne Naidet
Translation: Steve Novak
Garden of Love is
the title of an anonymous manuscript that Alexandre Astruc, a
sidelined cop since the death of his wife and kids, receives through
the mail. As he starts reading Astruc quickly realizes that the author
is Ariel Dayms, the major supect of a series of unsolved murders.
With stupor, the cop discovers that the story matches his own,
but the cards having been redistributed, the characters correspond
also to Dayms's life. And we should not forget Mathieu and Édouard,
the two inseperable friends in this story, both fully created
by the writer, since they seem so close to him, virtual literary
clones of their creator.
Alexandre, shaken by the manuscript,
tries to question Dayms but finds him in his house dead from suicide.
Convinced that the document is the last vengeance of this diabolical
mind, Astruc turns towards the only soul that can still help him :
Marie, his sister-in-law.
A machiavellian story which entangles
the reader in a game of warped mirors where reality is never what
it used to be two pages before.There is not one truth but many.
Characters are also multifacetted: faces that we seem to finally
grasp at one point in the tale but that evade us in the following
chapter. This book as a metaphor for literature :
how to tell here where fiction starts and reality ends ? But
in fact this reality does not exist since everything lies in the
hands of its creator, the writer. He manipulates us, just like his
character Ariel, he deftly multiplies set-ups and traps. Apperances
remain elusive and lucky will be those able to untangle the threads
of these complex lives, woven with delight into a ceaseless mess
by our author.
A great novel, superbly written, like a multi-voiced
musical score, a score of infinite voices. A book in which one can
measure the scope of Marcus Malte's talent. He coats with tenderness
the darkest of souls. He turns into a poet in the most horrific situations.
With few words, with just an ellipsis, he brings out light over warped
and wretched destinies.
"Schubert's notes, having
given out all their essence, kept on bursting and dying in the
same second, Perfumes and colors. Our dearly departed were dancing
on tiptoes in the middle of this ephemeral landscape."
>> Other Marcus Malte's "Reading" published
in Europolar :
