Cruelles natures*
Pascal Dessaint
Rivages/thriller, 2007, 194 páginas
Jean-Marc Laherrère
Translation: Steve Novak
Antoine
was a writer. His articles in mass audience magazines and the scientific
press had earned him a high & wide standing. Until
the day he couldn't write anymore. Thus he retired in the Brenne
region, the land of ponds, with Myriam. Since their last quarrel
they do not speak to each other.
Mauricette is 17, lives alone in Dunkerque
since her father has been sitting in a coma at the local hospital
following a car accident. About a year ago she got some mail
from her Mum who abandoned them when she was seven. Myriam tries
to explain why one day, she left with Antoine.
Pascal Dessaint here leaves Toulouse
for the foggy ponds of Brenne and the white low skies of the North.
He also leaves his team of cops to dive back with us in the midst
of characters on the brink of personal breakdowns, just like in
his first novels A Squid in the Brain or In
the Mouth of Darkness (Une
pieuvre dans la tête - Bouche
d'ombre). Compared
with these already excellent novels, the author has honed his craft,
his mastery of construction, timing, language without losing any
ability to bring us through to the realm of emotions. The novel's
rythm matches the narrator's, his environment. It slows down or swiftly
accelerates, flows from contemplation to the stress brought by violence,
the language follows all with ease. Pascal Dessaint, once almost
uniquely an urbanite, confirms here being both as sound a poet as
a prose writer in painting the beauties of a birdsong by a pond,
just like the brushstrokes he used for urban roamings. The criss-crossed
stories, with no apparent link at the start, slowly merge, bringing
the spellbound reader ever so faintly to the core of madness and
sorrow.
* Harsh Natures
