PREMIERS ROMANS
Sex Detectivesby Noa Y. Lions
♥♥ P.O.L, 320 p., 23 euros.
“Sex Detective”. Here is a tempting title. The trouble is that the inventors of this new profession, Dougheurl (a girl) and Duboï (a boy), do not know exactly what it consists of. Their customers seem better informed than them. The so-called Seven engages them in order to be surprised sexually. Melvil wants to find his childhood lover, a certain Martin with dream measurements. A man « too big and too small penis » worries about his own (measurements) and shows off at all costs to find out what’s going on. As for Judith, she would like her partners to stop taking themselves for Holofernes and panicking (works in two words too). It is no longer the Duluc Agency, but Ducul. Only our Dupont and Dupond of the fantasy investigation are not the sharpest knives. And an unfortunate water damage does not come to arrange their affairs. In this saucy first novel with the air of polyamorous vaudeville, it’s as much about fist-fucking as it is about Borges or Nabokov. It is signed by a certain Noa Y. Lions. You’d swear it’s a new pseudonym for Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam, but we’re not a text detective. Elisabeth Philippe
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Twilight of the Unicornsby Julie Girard
♥♥♥ Gallimard, 288 p., 20 euros.
Is the Silicon Valley version of the American dream taking on water? While in Gafamie it dismisses with a vengeance and the valiant editions L’Echappée continue their work on the mirages and crimes of “progress”, Gallimard publishes the first novel by a Frenchwoman in New York who finds this comedy sticky. Pushing to its climax the hubris of start-uppers who dream of being the CEO of a unicorn (box valued at over a billion dollars), Julie Girard imagines a researcher in quantum physics trained at Yale, launched into a private company: develop a universal computer capable of helping “the human decision-making process” by a brain implant, at $7,000 per installation (plus subscription) for a connected brain. gravitates around the naive (he can be fooled) the ordinary fauna of “arrived”journalists who prefer social events to evening readings to their children, gallerists converted to art as a financial product and others “influencers” still in work, augmented by the scalpel. All of this is told with high talent and reality-checked cruelty. And then, someone who writes « Guillaume was so neat that he seemed to have just come out of the dry cleaners” is to follow. Anne Crignon
A headbutt, couple Sigrun Palsdottir
♥♥♥ Translated from Icelandic by Eric Boury, Métailié, 192 p., 19 euros.
At the end of the 19th century, the whimsical Sigurlina lived in Reykjavik with her father, the widower Brandur, an extravagant archaeologist to whom she served as housekeeper and paper pusher. To escape her overwhelming daily life, the young adventurer embarks for New York on a whim. She takes with her an ancient fibula of inestimable value. There, she offers her services to a wealthy collector before ending up in a sewing workshop in the lower reaches of Manhattan. Chances, coincidences and twists form the fabric of this lively and joyful first novel which received the 2021 European Union Prize. Claire Julliard
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NEWS
I am not unhappy, by Franz Bartelt
♥♥♥♥ Le Dilettante, 224 p., 18 euros.
Franz Bartelt is a man who gets up early. Wake up at 4 a.m., write until 6 p.m. A relentless and prolific writer. Goldsmith of style, fan of Marcel Aymé and Simenon, outstanding storyteller and fine observer of human nature, as in these ten short stories devoted to the pangs of love. So those lovers who wait a lifetime “and who refused to sacrifice the overwhelming pleasure of waiting for the gloomy pleasure of what happened”. Or this woman who has the vice of the hairs”, cheating on her hairless husband with the first hairy comer. It’s caustic and tragic, full of black humor, poetry and humanity. It’s Bartlett. Frantz Hoez
FOREIGN
The Vixen, couple Dubravka Ugresic
♥♥♥ Translated from Croatian by Chloé Billon, Christian Bourgois, 480 p., 24 euros.
How are stories born? Thus questions, in this autobiographical essay, the remarkable Croatian writer, exiled in the Netherlands since 1993. She tells the life of the Russian writer Boris Pilniak, remembers an idyll which, for her, finished (with a redhead met in a Moscow bar), and tells of his installation in a country house which was bequeathed to him by an illustrious stranger, after his death. It’s smart, funny, erudite. In short, quite a story! Didier Jacob
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BD
Pressed stories, by Bernard Friot and Anne Simon
♥♥ Milan, 64 p., 13,90 euros.
Originally, there are the “Pressed Stories » by Bernard Friot, more than a million copies sold in 1988 and included in school textbooks. Here is the comic book version of these funny pastilles, where we meet an ill-intentioned little boy who has a poor orphan adopted by a royal couple (“If it starts well, there are chances that it ends badly (…) It would be much funnier, right? »), a dictionary that is only expressed in alphabetical order, the very arrogant clue to a police investigation… Exquisite scenes with inept fairies, mysterious mistresses and cunning kids. A nice new youth! Amanda Schmitt
CHILDREN
Each in turn, by Marianne Dubuc
♥♥♥ Saltimbanque, 60 p., 14.50 euros.
This delicate album opens with a country outing where four friends discover an egg. They take turns watching over him. The mouse takes him home and puts him warm in a muffler (she even cut out something to make a mini blanket from her big blanket). In the bear, the bird comes out of its shell. The rabbit opens his pantry wide. In the turtle’s house, the bird has disappeared (we’ll find it in the garden on a tree.) This book by Marianne Dubuc, who definitely works wonders from her native Quebec, is for ages 4 and up. Anne Crignon
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THE POCKET
Sarah Bernhardtthe pair of Claudette John
♥♥♥ Small Payot Library, 240 pages, 9 euros.
For the 100th anniversary of the death of the one who inspired the expression ” sacred beast ” at Cocteau, the biography of Sarah Bernhardt, by Claudette Joannis, is republished. Since its first publication (2000), it has unearthed several unpublished documents. For example, police records attesting that in 1875 Sarah, a member of the Comédie-Française in full glory, was still engaged in prostitution. Or the proof that at 67 she had a facelift done by a pioneer of cosmetic surgery during a tour of the United States. But what this essay above all shows is that the genius tragedian was a woman of rare courage, who in her early days did not hesitate to slap the member of the Comédie-Française who bullied her little sister. And who, later, will not hesitate to enlist among the Dreyfusards while Maurice, his darling son, has sided with the opposing camp. The declamatory playing of “La Divine” is considered old-fashioned. “She was an actress of her time,” conceded Sacha Guitry. who added: But if she came back, she would be ours. ». Jacques Nerson
OBS WRITERS
Spy lovers dictionaryby Vincent Jauvert
Plon, 512 p., 26 euros.
At “l’Obs”, we like to see our comrade Jauvert disembark with the greedy smile of the journalist happy with his shot, who brings back a very nice one. His speciality ? To scratch where no one goes, to open the door that others seek to leave closed. No wonder he became not a master spy, but a master in espionage, one of the best French connoisseurs of the subject. With this “Love Dictionary”, Vincent Jauvert opens his notebooks and revisits the entire history of these men and women in the shadows. With of course the scoops of which he is at the origin: how one of the most illustrious journalists of the “Canard enchaîné” was, also, an agent of the East; how the Chinese services installed their big ears – satellite dishes – in a small street in a suburban suburb of Ile-de-France… With also detours by Langley, the headquarters of the CIA, by the Lubianka , the headquarters of the KGB and then of the Russian FSB, and a plethora of stories of “moles”, “swallows” (these young women recruited by a service to compromise a repository of secrets and thus force his hand), terrible blows and betrayals. The great John le Carré said spies were people “shabby” et “little ones”. But they make great stories.
