Massif central by Christian Oster (review)

Learning of the death of a friend after having left Maud, Paul decides to travel from Paris to the Massif Central. As with many of Oster's other novels (for example Mon grand appartement, which won the Prix Médicis in 1999, or his 2017 La vie automatique), the first-person narrative starts with a departure precipitated by relationship issues. This is followed by a journey during which the protagonist encounters a variety of quirky characters. An old acquaintance, Alexandre Gervel—"qui n'était pas à rigoureusement parler un ami, encore qu'en m'hébergeant il se fût mis en position d'en devenir éventuellement un, sauf qu'il lui eût fallu non seulement m'ouvrir sa porte mais s'ouvrir lui et m'écouter" (46)—and his wife Estelle manufacture dental protheses from their home near Saint-Sauveur. Paul moves in with them, reading classics during the day and watching old movies with the couple in the evening. In Limoges, he then runs into another old friend, Antoine Levasseur, who lives in a sort of treehouse, and briefly stays with him before deciding to take up residence in a hotel, the location of which he is not completely sure: "Je ne savais pas où je voulais aller, je n'ai pas su non plus où j'arrivais" (98). However, besides our protagonist's peregrinations in the area, there is another "massif" at the center of this novel—Carl Denver. The novel's first sentence reads: "Je ne dis pas que Carl Denver avait l'intention de me tuer" (9). This could be the case, however. The narrator not only stole Maud from Denver, but, adding insult to injury, has now left her—a second affront—and one does not cross Carl Denver. "Je m'étais souvent demandé si Carl était mauvais, ou pervers, ou torturé au point d'exercer sa vengeance comme une grammaire, à chaque détour de phrase, et dans quelle mesure elle pouvait se contenir dans les mots," the narrator writes (12). Yet as much as he tries to avoid Denver—both physically and mentally—the latter's presence is felt on every page, in nearly every sentence. Nevertheless, given the narrator's constant fluctuations between certainty and uncertainty, his second-guessing, reevaluations, and hypothetical tangents, it is difficult for the reader to determine precisely how much of a threat Denver truly is. Paul later notes: "Tout, une fois avec moi-même, passé les irruptions de Denver dans ma réalité, redevenait matière à hypothèses. Je pouvais douter infiniment" (121). Are those shadowy figures that the narrator frequently sees really Denver and his proxies? Did Denver, a cinema critic, send the narrator an anonymous quiz on Howard Hawks? The novel is a psychological thriller, a mystery, but unlike Oster's earlier works which explored the genre, this one is much more foreboding. It is this oscillation between detached bemusement of quotidian existence—the absurdity of living in a treehouse, the protocol for asking a new acquaintance to run an errand—and existential dread that makes this novel a compelling read.