La femme au Colt 45 par Marie Redonnet (review)

La petite fille de Monsieur Linh (2005), also about an immigrant, though his trauma is induced by war, may be less surprised by the denouement, though appreciative of its probing toward integration. Regional distinctiveness and local color also pervade. Overall, this timely novel deals sensitively and deftly with the effects of natural disaster and loss, as well as nurturing, accepting relationships, on the human psyche. Rockhurst University (MO) M. Kathleen Madigan Redonnet, Marie. La femme au Colt 45. Paris: Tripode, 2015. ISBN 978-2-37055075 -0. Pp. 112. 15 a. A fiftyish woman, having left her career as the star actress of the“Magic Théâtre,” having become separated from her husband and her son during an insurrection in her native country, having traversed a dense and apparently endless forest, finds herself alone, perched on the edge of a tall cliff, with an old Colt 45 pistol in her hand. Clearly, the time for decision has come. Thus begins Redonnet’s new novel, her first since Diego (2005). Its heroine is “Lora Sander,” who has made her way out of a war-torn “Azirie” in order to seek refuge in “Santarie.” Sometimes we hear her own account of events, sometimes her speech is framed by that of another narrator. What becomes clear quickly is that life in Santarie is in many ways just as difficult as in Azirie. Readers familiar with Redonnet’s work will recognize the declarative simplicity and narrative naiveté that have been the hallmarks of her style since the beginning of her career.Yet they will also be greeted by new features in her writing that amply affirm Redonnet’s growth as an artist. Salient among those features is her focus on the political dimension of human experience—an impulse that was largely absent (or muted) in much of her earlier work. She asks a series of timely questions in this novel. How do people react to organized violence, and how do the terms of human behavior change during a time of war? How does society view refugees, and particularly female refugees? How do people live clandestinely, and what consequences does that have for their identity? Can non-violence and passive resistance be efficient tools in the face of utterly ruthless oppression? How do individuals survive disaster, and what are the wages of such survival? What kinds of priorities govern the relations of the personal and the collective? Does the work of art have a role to play in the political world, and what is its horizon of possibility therein? For her part, Lora Sander is struck by the way that fiction inflects our understanding of the real. As she makes her way toward the city of “Santaré,” she muses, “j’aurais pu croire que je roulais vers la frontière américaine et que je jouais dans un film” (38). Yet she realizes that such a dynamic can also be reversed. Speaking of a man she met in exile, she remarks,“sa vie a dû être un roman qu’il n’a jamais écrit, comme les vies de ces morts enterrés à côté de lui” (60). In a similar vein, she wonders how she ought to read her own story. Her husband, Lora 224 FRENCH REVIEW 90.2 Reviews 225 reflects, would certainly have seen it as Greek tragedy; she prefers to view it as a“drame moderne” (102). They are undoubtedly both right, and simultaneously so, because Redonnet presents this story both as fable and as urgent, immediate testimony, neither mode quite trumping the other. University of Colorado Warren Motte Redouane, Najib. L’année de tous les apprentissages. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015. ISBN 978-2-343-07470-2 Pp. 298. 25 a. Après avoir fini ses études au Canada, où il a laissé son grand amour Sarah, le jeune Wahid est de retour au Maroc dans le but d’accomplir son service civil. Devenu “civiliste” dans un ministère, il tente de s’intégrer à la société mais découvre rapidement qu’il est devenu un étranger dans son propre pays.Les incompétents,en revanche, ont obtenu de bons postes grâce à leur art de graisser les pattes. C’est...