Winter 2023 Literary Season: A Vanity Fair Selection
We started again. Publishers have started publishing about 517 novels and short stories Weekly Books, of this January literary season. That is, a wider winter season than last fall (with 490 titles). Among this group are the stars Daniel Pennac, Pierre Lemaitre, Marie-Hélène Lafon, Lydie Salvayre, Véronique Ovaldé or Constance Debré. Vanity Fair he kept other names in the selection of the first works published in recent days.
Gloria, Gloria, By Gregory Le Floch
A young woman travels to the island of Elba. He finds himself resting on the beach at the entrance of a cave. It was here that his grandfather had to escape a scandal half a century ago. This flight and its reasons, he told them in his diary, where he described in detail his erotic inclination towards older people. By trying to unravel the mystery of this ancestor, the author casts a magnificent reflection on these wrinkled bodies of old age, still full of dreams. Sometimes in the form of a poem: “Old age is the dawn born into the world.” “In the form of additional figures:” 32% of older people cry from sadness in front of the sunset, and 51% prefer to go to bed earlier and not see it. »
It’s also about the hermits, Saint Anthony and Cher, yes the singer, all served in a magnificent writing full of lust. after Traveling around the world (December prize, Wepler prize among others…), 36-year-old Gregory Le Floch confirms that he is one of the most talented authors of his generation.
Gloria, Gloria, Grégory Le Floch, Burgois publications, 224 pages, €19.
Mystery customerBy Mathieu Lauverjat
The narrator is from a working class family in Roubaix. “The family culture: smoking a lot, working without a filter, declaring nothing but false expense reports, and going to the cash register with your feet firmly on the floor. After some quickly aborted research, he discovered a way to make some money: bicycle delivery. Until this accident that left him “in the face of the Atlantic storm”. Dislocated shoulder, broken elbow. He considers himself “unattainable”. So he plants on his bed when he comes across a documentary that introduces him to the business of a mystery shopper. A company is responsible for checking whether its employees comply with the applicable standards. Is the burger cheddar well placed in the middle of the steak? Has it melted well? Did the waiter look the customer in the eye while delivering the order? A revelation to the narrator. “The absoluteness, the renunciation, the ubiquity, I quickly took a liking to this half-private detective, half-vigilante job for a kingpin client. In this standardized world of constant flux, as it is important to ensure that every gesture of service is relational and important to everyone’s well-being, I finally felt like I was at the center of the progress process. For a few weeks he was caught up in this illusion, before he realized that he was another invalid who was being paid off by the police – excuse me – note, another invalid.
Infantile consumers, belittling algorithms, all sprinkled with excruciating startup talk… In this first novel, Mathieu Lauverjat presents an ultra-modern story, a very precise satire of the business world and the mania for valuing everyone. A success.
The Mystery Shopper, Mathieu Lauverjat, Scribes Publications, 240 pages, €19.50.
Dangers of smoking in bedBy Mariana Enriquez
Random pages, a little girl who digs up bones, a heartbeat fetishist who falls in love with a man with a heart condition, missing people who come back but are no longer quite the same, or two groups who later eat a man’s corpse. suicide rock star… The heroes of this collection of twelve terrifying short stories are often teenagers, hand in hand, neglected, condemned by fate and evil spirits. It’s raw, lewd, intimate, political. We think of Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen King, David Lynch.
Argentinian writer Mariana Enriquez, adored throughout Latin America, made a name for herself in France with her stone. Our part of the night (Reprinted in paperback by Editions du Points). With this collection, which was first published in Buenos Aires in 2009, she shows how much she deserves the nickname “princessa del terror”.
The dangers of smoking in bed Mariana Enriquez, translated from Spanish (Argentina) by Anne Plantagenet, Editions du Sous-sol, 237 pages, €21.
A real change of sceneryBy Clement Benech
Romain d’Astéries is the black sheep of his family from the Bordeaux bourgeoisie. To break up with him for good, she decided to become a French teacher. He envisions his first assignment as far away as possible, in Guyana. There he will be able to explore the “new pedagogies” he loves. But an error in the National Education computer system landed him in Chaudezat, a village of 1,000 inhabitants in Puy-de-Dôme… He tried to overcome his frustration and apply his very progressive ideas. It left the “separation between disciplines” behind as brutally as “interdisciplinarity”. Therefore, the teacher will set up a French language and sports course, “a particularly clever combination: while doing sports, we lost our breath, challenged our teammate, insulted the opponent… In short, we went to “logutical actions”. French language. Of course, all his illusions will collide with reality.
Clément Bénech takes malicious pleasure in mistreating his character. He gives an earthy, harsh tale, especially when he criticizes her New talk pedagogical. During training, future teachers are thus invited to “write their expectations from the future school on the wide petals of a flower drawn on a board (“benevolence”, “companion”, “tolerance” are expected). It is also about intervening “verbally, during a ‘language session’, all within the framework of a ‘structuring ritual’… Not to mention this constant encouragement to ‘be ourselves’ and oppose the establishment, coming from its representatives who stifle any debate…” Contemporary Voltaire’s tale of idealism.
