L'affaire Mayerling by Bernard Quiriny (review)

In modern urban living, the acquisition of a new apartment with glistening countertops, pristine appliances, perfectly laid tile, and personal design flourishes is the stuff of dreams. Until it becomes a nightmare. In the small fictional city of Rouvières, as residents move into the newly-developed Mayerling, a "residence de standing" (20), all seems right in the world. Little by little, however, the lives of the Mayerling's inhabitants, through whom the story is told, devolve. Madame Camy, a fifty-fve-year-old formerly buttoned-up widow, becomes a nymphomaniac. The Lemoine couple, young and in love, develop a deep hatred for one another. The angelic seven-year-old Lucien Thuillier stops eating, starts acting out at school, and attempts to murder his mother in her sleep. Annie Chopard begins seeing ghosts of young children in her bed. Monsieur Paul cannot escape the deafening sounds of his upstairs neighbors, and the Lequennec family suffers from mounting plumbing problems that render their space uninhabitable. Rats move in. The garage becomes the nighttime haunt of prostitutes and wayward adolescents. Inside the Mayerling, from the basement to the top floor, life is a living hell. Residents are only able to find respite and normalcy when they escape the city, immersing themselves in nature with trips to the sea and weekends in remote forests. The Mayerling itself is the central figure of this novel, taking on a life of its own. Its residents believe the building has a soul possessed by the devil and are convinced it has anthropomorphic force as it seemingly assaults its denizens in increasingly flagrant and dangerous ways. Eventually, the residents decide to take action, methodically and violently trying to slay the concrete beast. At times bordering on the burlesque and absurd, Quiriny uses his characters, the Mayerling included, to call into question contemporary urbanization. At what cost do we continue to develop the urban and peri-urban landscape? What are the human, social, and environmental consequences of pursuing concrete dreams? In a rather foreboding warning, Quiriny's narrator peppers the text with rich intertextual references including Paul Guth's Le naïf locataire (52), Roland Topor's Le locataire chimérique (96), and Marcel Aymé's Maison basse (267), all of which suggest that we have for far too long ignored the real and potential consequences of urban development and sprawl. At the novel's opening, Braque, a friend of the narrator who has an inexplicable obsession with residential buildings, foreshadows what will come as he laments urbanization, gentrification, and development: "Les villes se droguent à la construction. Les grues innombrables sont des seringues; le béton, une drogue. Plus la ville se pique, mieux elle se sent. Et pourtant, c'est par là qu'elle meurt" (30). How long will our ignorance last? How long do we have until the concrete jungle comes alive and consumes us, dooming us to the fate of the Mayerling residents?