Onze " faits divers ", d'une banalité tout apparente.
Qu'il s'agisse d'un groupe d'ouvriers misérables passant en fraude la frontière italienne, de deux jeunes filles fugueuses, d'un enfant voleur, d'une femme accouchant seule sur la moquette d'un mobile home, surveillée par son chien-loup au regard de braise, qu'il s'agisse de la fillette broyée par un camion, ou de la fillette violée dans une cave de H. L. M., l'auteur impose aux faits une étrangeté bouleversante. L'incident s'annule au profit du dénominateur commun de toute souffrance humaine qu'articulent l'horreur de la solitude, la répression, l'injustice et, quoi qu'il arrive, le fol et vain espoir de rencontrer, dans l'amour et dans la liberté, une merveilleuse douceur.

Letteratura francese del XX secolo. Racconti.

In this masterful collection of eleven short stories, J.M.G. Le Clézio explores the lives of those who subsist on the margins of society, the victims of poverty, crime, age, and the disintegration of family and tradition. Described as being set largely in the French Riviera region, against its unseen backdrop of affluence, these stories seem to exist in the harsh space between traditional culture and the modern world.

Winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, Le Clézio was described by the Nobel Committee as an “…explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization”. There is a subtle brutality to the lives of Le Clézio’s characters, a feeling that society has ceased to protect them, no longer offering sanctuary or sustenance. We see them in moments of extreme vulnerability, but without knowing how they have arrived there. Their tales unfold with an intense realism, through finely wrought landscapes interwoven with vividly rendered thoughts and memories.

Moloch is a compelling story of distrust and resiliency. Young, pregnant and fearful of the authorities, Liana awaits the delivery of her child while living isolated in a mobile home with only a wolf dog for company. The most chilling moment in this collection is seen through the eyes of the wolf dog, ravaged by hunger and left alone in the mobile home with the newborn.

In The Escapee, a prison escapee employs the survival lessons of his family’s shepherding culture as he flees to the mountains. His thirst, hunger and fatigue elicit memories of tending sheep with his brother and evading soldiers with his fugitive uncle, until an encounter with a young boy brings both rescue and betrayal. I found the tone of this story to be somewhat reminiscent of Le Clezio’s excellent novel, [Desert].

In Yondaland, a young girl finds solace in an abandoned theatre that faces the ocean, where she soaks up the energy of sun and sea, to be carried back to her hospitalized mother. But the building is slated for demolition and she awaits the wrecking ball from her perch under the pointed arch recess of a window, desperate to save her one remaining place of happiness.

The destructive forces of time and progress converge in Villa Aurora, as a young man returns to the site of childhood memories, a neglected villa overrun by feral cats and home to a reclusive, mysterious woman. Expecting to relive the magic of his memories, he finds only an elderly woman living alone in fear, silence and loneliness.

The title story, The Round is a simple, yet powerful tale of youth seeking risk and excitement, trying to fill an inescapable emptiness. Two young women make a round of the downtown streets at high-speed on mopeds, intending to commit a petty theft, with devastating consequences.

Although choosing to write in French, Le Clézio was raised in a bilingual, English-French household and was introduced to English literature at a young age. Knowing this makes it all the more disappointing that so few of his works are readily available in English translation. Le Clézio is a brilliant writer who deserves to be more widely read. Literate and accessible, lucid and eloquent, these stories are dense and absorbing in their expressive power. I highly recommend this outstanding collection. ( )

he writes with a longing, a restlessness, a tension that pulls the reader in and pushes the characters to their destiny. such weighty themes of silence, fear, light, loneliness, emptiness, freedom, death. and all of these themes radiate from the landscape blinding, infusing, drowning the main characters, causing them to bend and break under the weight. this is amazing literature, true art in prose.

Un peu trop angoissant par moment à cause des répétitions.. ( )