Douces déroutes by Yanick Lahens (review)

With her most recent novel, Yanick Lahens offers a bittersweet portrayal of current social and political conditions in Haiti. The oxymoron of the title, Douces déroutes, associates sweetness/tenderness (douces) with failure/disarray/collapse (déroutes). It also contains a subtle allusion to Russell Banks's Continental Drift, as confirmed by the epigraph.

The novel opens with a letter from Judge Raymond Berthier to his wife, Thérèse: a farewell message that brings to memory Raoul Peck's use of Patrice Lumumba's letter to his wife, Pauline, at the beginning of Peck's 2000 film Lumumba. The letter sets the tone of the novel, revealing the cause of his forthcoming death: his attempt at fighting corruption. It is also a love letter to his wife. In such a juxtaposition, the novel can be read as a denunciation of the corruption of the Haitian justice system and the dereliction of the society.

The plot follows several Haitians of different age groups and social backgrounds as well as two foreigners, an American and a Frenchman. As there is no hero per se, Lahens skilfully contrasts internal and external narrative viewpoint and narrative voice in order to distinguish her main characters from the secondary ones. The former can be identified by their stream of consciousness, which offers the reader an insight into their motivations and preoccupations. In this category we can put Brune Bertier, a singer who is the daughter of the murdered judge; Pierre Martin, her maternal uncle, a homosexual and returning resident; Cyprien Novilus, a lawyer and Brune's lover; Ézékiel, a student and would-be poet, friend of Brune and Pierre; and Joubert, an assassin and gang member, who has befriended Ézékiel. Two foreigners are also among the main characters: Ronny, a scholar from Louisiana who has been visiting Haiti for many years and follows up on some development projects; and Francis, a French journalist and Ronny's friend, who is visiting Haiti for the first time.

Cyprien crudely summarizes the social ambitions he perceives in Haitian Black professionals who are ready to trample all principles and moral values in order to climb the social ladder: "Ici, si tu perds ton temps en conjectures sophistiquées sur la justice et l'injustice, les états d'âme et autres balivernes, tu te retrouves au fond du chaudron" (Here, if you waste time speculating about Justice versus Injustice, scruples and other nonsense, you will end up at the bottom of the cauldron; 28).¹

Cyprien the lawyer and Joubert the assassin share the same view of Haitian society as divided between winners (les vainqueurs) and losers (les vaincus). This dichotomy is a recurring feature of Lahens's fiction, mostly through the trope of ambitious characters eager to become successful and break away from poverty. In this novel, the binary is reinforced by the image of the cauldron (the bottom of the cauldron, more precisely) as opposed to the froth (floating above the broth).

Interacting closely with these protagonists are some secondary characters who are known from an external narrative viewpoint. Their motivations are sometimes elicited through the comments of the main characters or through the omniscient narrator. These figures include Thérèse Berthier, Brune's mother and Pierre's sister; Nerline and Waner, Brune's friends; Adelina, Pierre's cook and housekeeper; Sami Hamid, the rich "Syrian-Lebanese" bourgeois who controls licit and illicit trade in Port-au-Prince; his cousin, Dorothée, a chabine whose role is to seduce any potential accomplice identified by Hamid; Emile Lauriston, Cyprien's boss; Senator Germisier and the Minister of Justice, who are part of Hamid's network of corruption; Ézékiel's mother; and his two brothers, Onèl, the eldest, who is a talented painter, and Espérandieu, the youngest, who is deaf and mute.

Douces déroutes can also be read as a psychological thriller, since its plot develops around the elucidation of Judge Bertier's assassination. Pierre (Judge Bertier...