En mai, fais ce qu’il te plaît par Christian Carion, Laure Irrmann (review)

Reviews 213 says that a poem is a flute made from holes pierced “dans l’os du langage” by the poet (63). Bobin’s university study of philosophy and his Christian faith seem to underlie much of the thought and feeling behind this book’s attempt to represent and cope with love that persists for a beloved who is more present in death than she may have been in life. College of San Mateo (CA) Susan Petit Carion, Christian, et Laure Irrmann. En mai, fais ce qu’il te plaît. Paris: Flammarion, 2015. ISBN 978-2-0813-6636-7. Pp. 150. 17 a. Toward the middle of this novel, one reads: “C’est tout un peuple qui se déverse sur les routes, comme si le pays perdait son sang en ce mois de mai 1940” (61). The sentence economically encapsulates the historical context framing this fictive narrative inspired by Carion’s parents’recollections of the exode of May 1940. There is an idyllic quality that the authors attempt to infuse into the story, which is even more present in the film version having appeared this past fall right behind the publication of the book (the same procedure followed in the case of Carion’s most successful Joyeux Noël). Paul, a farmer and the mayor of Lebucquière, married to Mado who operates the only café in town, convinces his fellow citizens that they must follow the earlier prescribed directive from the préfecture to flee any invading Germans and seek refuge in Dieppe.A young schoolteacher, Suzanne Blondel, is the town’s other representative of French Republican life. There is also the unrealistic contrarian, Roger, who questions leaving without a military or police escort. And there are other colorful characters who add to the mix of the unprepared vagabonds of Lebucquière, including at an animalistic level Paul’s pet goose, Joséphine. But the authors have the novel idea of introducing an anti-Nazi German professor of French who had to flee Cologne in 1939 for political reasons and decided to hide out in Lebucquière, under the guise of a Flemish farmhand, with his seven-year-old son (the mother may have died giving birth, as the photos brought with them show only father Hans and son Max during the various stages of Max’s youth). This shifts the plotline from being a purely French story into something more nuanced, offering varying cultural points of view. Moreover , when the father and son become disconnected, Hans tries to stay alive, with Nazi soldiers from his homeland all around, by following a Scottish soldier whose regiment has been annihilated; and at one point they are likewise with a tirailleur sénégalais. The novel is generally well-paced, with the requisite amount of suspense, especially needed for a story meant to be filmed. But there is a rather simplistic element of deus ex machina at play, as the reader understands, with each escape from danger by Hans or by Max; the two cannot help but be reunited in the end. Such a positive ending, after much death and sorrow encountered by the villagers along their cruel way, is even raised to a higher power as father and son (the latter having been protected by the young woman schoolteacher) are joined in the final scene by Mademoiselle Blondel: “Ils s’éloignent tous les trois” (150). But then, perhaps something new and cathartic needed to grow out of the tragedy and the hardship that was the exode, just as healthy May wheat was starting to show itself in the fields of northern France. Sewanee: The University of the South George Poe Claro. Crash-test. Arles: Actes Sud, 2015. ISBN 978-2-330-05334-5. Pp. 229. 19,50 a. Ce texte exige un investissement de la part de son lecteur. En brefs chapitres, Claro tisse des liens possibles entre trois personnages. Le premier travaille dans le département des crash-tests d’un fabricant d’automobiles, où il met en scène des collisions.Au début des années 1970, on se sert encore de cadavres—qui meurent une seconde fois, sans verser de sang cette fois-ci...